I said when he was appointed that I didn’t like it, based on the history of older Premiership coaches going to other clubs years later - most often the move doesn’t come off.
Is he the right guy to take us to a flag? I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. He’s got the runs on the board, but that was a decade ago.
Can you judge him on our results last year? Obviously not.
Can you judge him on our results in the JLT? Obviously not.
Can you even judge him based on results this year? Probably not.
Realistically we won’t really know if he’s the right guy for the gig probably till Round 11 of 2018.
I thought we saw some good signs tonight. Joe was in the game, Tippa was great fwd, Stewart showed he can play, Ambrose was good.
Hurley, Watson, Heppel were ordinary, too many poor disposals, can we blame woosha for that?
Maybe its just occurred to you Wim that Woosha is yet to prove himself, but calling him out after a practice game??
There are clearly a few more pieces of the puzzle to come, Hooker, Hartley, TBC for example.
Was tonight more about winning than managing workloads and trying new things?
This is what annoys me.
James Hird set a standard with his statement ‘He wanted to be judged based on the on field results’.
I think it is the best way to judge the coach (and his coaching panel). Stop with the excuses and rubbish, it’s time to solely judge team performance.
On last year’s performance, he gets a big tick. Seriously, I’m still surprised we actually won a game let alone three given what we put on the park week to week. Yeah, the Brisbane loss was disappointing because we were the better team on form, but our best and worst is everything as good and bad as Brisbane’s. We were at our worst and Brisbane at their best (albeit because tactically we were shit).
So car this JLT it’s been a failure. We saw the same patterns in JLT1 as we did in JLT3. Against Collingwood (who rested their best players) overran what we worked so hard for across most of the game in the space of 30 minutes. Against Geelong, who looked to be cruising early overturned our dominance that we had for most of the game in 20 minutes. I don’t see it just snapping together when the season begins nor did I expect it to.
I’ll judge again during the year based on our on field performance. I’m not overly worried about wins and losses because I don’t think some of our older players will return to their former glory and juggling will be a difficult task. But I want to see us build a sustainable style of footy that is exciting and puts us in the best position to win finals (something we haven’t done for 15 years). I want to see the team fight vigorously for the ball. I don’t want to see players give the game away and just bide their time and waste yet another season.
We’ve now seen a pattern in JLT that we cannot seem to sustain our effort or match the opposition when they lift. If this is still a pattern by the end of the season, then it’ll be another wasted season.
I’ve had enough of the excuses. In particular the ‘it’ll be alright next year’ or ‘it’ll be better when we have our best midfield back’.
I think the better question, is whether his support staff are up to the task. A head coach is less hands on due to the duties placed up on them. Are our assistant coaches up for the task. Like SMJ said next year will tell, unless something diabolical or out of the blue happens this year.
Unfortunately though the excuses are there weather your tired of it or not. Hird got pushed out and never got to show his potential we will never know if he could have been good or bad. No club has ever gone through that same hell before, if you judge his coaches performances while all this has been going on, you have rocks in your head. The same with John, I am not going to say he did a great job last year, or he did a bad one. Nothing to gauge it against, no team has ever been in that situation.
I have no idea what to expect this year of the players or the coach, again this has never happened before, 10 senior players coming back after a year off.
All we can hope is for improvement. If we see improvement of the playing gelling and finish the season better then we started (depending on injury) I would base that as adequate. Its just really hard to gauge anything in regards to good or bad coaches in the past 5 odd years of absolute hell, that no club has ever encountered.
I’d love to know if he just hates taggers or is stubborn. Maybe we just don’t have the cattle?
Either way we let guys off the chain too easy and we don’t seem to be able to halt momentum. Dangerfield is a gun no doubt but his job is easier when he is 40m in the clear all day. Now is that under instruction or just lazy from the players, I’d love to know the answer
The best player in the game played like it. Were not going to get far if we want to ■■■ wins, by other teams being down. When our guys are some of the best players in the league then we can talk about flag runs. There’s some promising kids coming through but they are still away off.
Seeing as though I’m in the worsfold thread, I’ll say that’s how I’ll judge him this year. Can he get heppel, parish, Merrett and raz to their full potential. If they don’t get there then essington forever.
You may not be able to play a hard tag on him but gee someone in the same post code would be nice. No one will stop him racking them up on the inside but you simply can’t allow him to be 40m clear on his own in acres of space
So it appears that is your problem, Wim, not Woosha’s.
In a year when we had our team decimated by a bullshit decision the spoon was the least of our worries. To get three wins, when all the footy establishment had predicted none, blood a number of young players who will hopefully go on to be champions for us and start the #comeback is all we could have asked for last year.
Now f you are slashing your wrists after three practice matches, where players time on the field is managed to the minute for their workloads, then you need to take up a new hobby. Do you know how to knit? There are these great hats going around that appear to be all the rage amongst progressive types…