Stephen Kearney must be given the position and the Parramatta Eels football club needs to start being run like any successful organisation - in unity with a big picture objective in mind.
And that big picture is more than just to "win a premiership", because you won't win a premiership until you get all the components that goes towards Rugby League success right first.
As I've blogged in the past week, that includes re-moulding Parramatta's culture but in a way that leverages and plays to our natural strengths. I see Kearney as someone who can do that.
Parramatta is a club that requires discipline, but not in a heavy handed manner.
Kearney has done his apprenticeship at the most disciplined club at the competition in Melbourne. Say what you like about the Storm but they have a reputation for professionalism and commitment, but at the same time they're a tight-knit unit that shows team bonding does have to stem from big night's on the piss.
Furthermore, Kearney's also had the advantage of working with Wayne Bennett when they teamed to achieve the unachievable and win the Rugby League World Cup. You could not ask for a better preparation to an NRL coaching role than those two positions.
Parramatta is a club with a tremendous junior base, many of whom come from a Polynesian background and having a head coach they can more easily relate to, cannot be a bad thing. It's not a reason to hire Kearney, but it's another advantage he has in his favour.
I see Kearney's appointment as an opportunity to start thinking about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of our great club and start working forwards to a master plan that will deliver sustainable, long-term success. That's a difficult thing to achieve in the age of the salary cap, but by properly leveraging our junior system, working out where we need to focus our development efforts and then complementing that with a re-working of the back office, our great club now has a chance to re-build itself from the pretty grim-looking position it seems to be in right now.
As the Roosters have shown over the past two years, if you work hard enough you can climb back up the hill almost as quickly as you fell down it.
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The holding back of the footy team by the board and its machinations has been going on for years. We can sit here and criticise Dennis FItzgerald for signing Hagan for 2007 whilst expecting Brian Smith to coach out 2006 but what is really different here ? I just see the footy team being destabilised by board members with no real footy base. We can wax lyrical about adopting a business approach but dont forgot about on field performance at the end of the day.
Kearney is just an image for change, for the public. But we said the same thing about Ando when he came in and how he was gonna bring a hard working mentallity to how parra play and going to develop a tough and up the middle style of play more like the dragons and the storm blah blah blah blah.
I think its bullshit that we seem to think the polynesian players dnt respond to ando just because he might yell and shout or want more work out of the players.
Shut the fuck up and do what your coach sais. There is no way u should sack a coach because some players dnt like what he requests as a work ethic.
Ship those players instead.
I do think however Kearney will bring a different outlook on how the team bonds and want to play for each other after being with the storm for so long and seeing how and where the leaders of the team should be playing and the players around them support them.
The problem is if he goes 2 seasons without a pretty high success rate we will just sack him and move to the next poor bastard that tries to coach us. we need to give our coaches time to develop there own way to play the team. Build a squad that they want and build a manager status where what the coach sais goes and thats it.
Hopefully Kearney brings the same hard work ethic and discipline because im sick of hearing about players and there issues with what the coach wants.
Osbourne should go too, is he not in charge of the eels and the coach? and if you want to take it further why is that the board are not being removed as well? I am sure that if the club had no short or long term plans this would have or should have been discussed at board level.
I cant see a new coach making any difference without a complete overhaul starting at board level.
I'm Ken Crapper
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