1. Morale: Guessing a number of players whose contracts are up have been told that they are not being renewed. Rumours about us wanting to swap Norman for Paulo/Austin probably have some basis. Can't imagine players not wanted would be good for morale and cant imagine Norman would be happy at living in boring Canberra.
2. Forward pack that gets owned by all other teams. Some top quality forwards but always having to punch above their weight
3. Issues in key spine positions: Hooker - need a top line or at least 2nd tier hooker. FB instability.
4. Lack of a captain who can make the key decisions, rally the troops when down, twist the knife when winning and command respect from the refs.
Solution:
1. If players are not happy and giving 110%. That may be understandable given circumstances but they need to go to Wenty and bring in hungry players from Wenty (salary cap allowing)
2. Partially fixed with Junior Paulo but one more Solomona/Pengai would be great. I still think Mannah is fine but still think Alvaro needs to change his game or go. He looks like the budget version of Aaron Woods. Cant Norman give Alvaro some speed or something -he looks like he is sleep walking.
3. Guth fullback - fixed if he stays fit. Hooker - difficult to pinch a top hooker of another team unless they are blocked behind incumbent. Can Smith fill in until we develop or buy one.? Peats should not have been let go unless they were planning on dumping him anyway. So what if they took all our points away, we were not going to be allowed finals anyway and we are not going to be contenders until we have a top hooker.
4. If Guth can stay fit I would crown him KIng - but not this year - Mannah is our best acting captain atm.
Regarding the coach I would stand by BA but think he
1. needs a good devils advocate - Sterlo interested? Think Sterlo would be great as he has no coaching ambitions so would be happy to be a stable side kick despite a wealth of knowledge.
2. Needs to feel secure so he is planning long term and not always trying to win this weekend at the expense of a premiership later. (Peats decision could have been an example of this). Even if you do not want to renew his contract he needs to believe he is here long term and stable.
Regarding poor junior progression and lost juniors. I haven't heard a convincing argument that this is so but am guessing that enough people with inside knowledge are claiming this so must be something there. Surely this is now being addressed.
Replies
Number 2 ding ding ding.
Rumours have it that the junior non use and getting a go was a big reason for Luke Burt's departure. Would have been a better coach for Wenty than Cayless, The way the NRL/ISP is now structured especially with the ISP being affectively the old reserve grade and NRL players not in the top 17 each week play at Wenty, that coach should be working closely with the NRL coach, especially when the ISP players train with the NRL squad
Interesting Col, i wouldnt be surprised if that was the case with Burt.
Regardless id like to see us look outwards to winning cultures for support staff and coaches in general.
Good point Snake. There are 2 problems as to why we are losing. Semi and poor tactics.
Semi has been a huge loss and cannot be understated. This bloke won games for us on his own! We need to offer him $1m after the Olympics to entice him back. He is the only winger, EVER, worth that money. If spine players, who win you games, are worth that then so does Semi.
Tactics, or lack of them, is another problem. Our poor tactics were papered over by Semi and now they are being exposed. BA has had over 4 years to get our forwards to offload and they're still incapable! Most of our forwards are the same, same weight, same build, same height, no skills so no go forward. Small forwards need to offload and not one out bash and barge otherwise they'll be dominated by the bigger packs (which means the other 15 teams then). But that is all we're capable of, B & B, which is their default position when dominated.
Fix those problems and we might actually win a game this year.
colin hussey : That is the first time that you have said anything like criticism of Arthur as coach, in my experience. What you say is the reality of the subject. I know who will not be happy with you but keep it up. Wenty, U20`s and junior development are a mess.
Robert Lloyd, if you cared to read all my posts you might find that I have said similar things in the past.
If you can comprehend what I said, I am not criticising in the sense that you are thinking regarding BA, what I am saying is that whoever coaches the Wenty team should also be part of the set up with the NRL squad, when the Wenty players are training with the NRL squad.
I look at the Wenty structure and probably no different to other ISP teams as they too have the disruption of having a good number of their players on NRL contracts with the rest basically on minimum contracts that also means they have paid jobs outside of playing RL. Our junior teams are doing ok, and that's a fact, I would not say that they are in a mess.
Each to their own Robert.
how did it get this way?
Some good calls there wile.
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