A good discussion took place between Hoe, Pou and Coryn on defensive and management issues in Reversing Four Years of Regression.
I found credit in the discussion from all sides and a worthwhile read. Originally, I was replying on that post/blog but it ended up going a bit broader. Some of the detail might get lost as I tend to look more at the "big picture".
HOE pointed out the decline of the team's defence (2020-24 from 3rd to 16th ranked) noting out that top-two defences had won all but two titles since 2006 (2015 Cowboys, 5th; 2016 Sharks, 3rd). I liked Pou's counter argument: Only Two sides have great defence but 15 are outside that. That said the top 2 sides whoever they maybe, still end up having the best stats.
Where I disagree with Pou is that BA had heaps of opportunities in terms of getting our defence structurally right (better) and failed to do so. The reason (rationale) is irrelevant. It was the same weakness week after week regardless of how well we were going. If we played Souths in those days you could bet on us being lapped for 6 tries plus and "he/we" could not do a thing about it.
Ryles spends half a dozen games this year and got it right. Every year we sat around asking "can it be that hard?" Obviously for some, not for others. HOE points out Matt Elliott bring all this out in 2019 and that PLV's increased speed of the game (2020 six again) brought BA's structural weaknesses undone. Something Super doubled down on.
Back to Coryn's points. He is selecting the obvious issues of our evolution past the renaissance. That is, the inexperience of coaching and administrative staff. He see's this as a major weakness. I see it as an imperical aspect of learning, when no obvious alternatives are available.
In life just about everyone I know has become experienced through making mistakes, identifying them and correcting same. There used to be an expression used "as good as a bought one"'. If you know a bought one out there that we could have got, bring it into the discussion.
MON has had his chance and he maybe improving still, but I would have to identify a defence for him to prove me wrong. I say this because we just don't know enough about his relationship with the power broking that was taking place during that 2019 plus period.
Face value says we should be in the market for a new "head of football" or is there a better title for this position because I am not sure that anyone is going to argue that Ryles is the Head of Football. Its horses for courses but I could not imagine us appointing a new "head of football" and him telling Ryles what to do?
Maybe a new title needs to be constructed like "head of football administration" does that exclude any empowerment of Ryles? who I believe should be answerable only to the CEO and Chairman and that excludes the current Head of Football i.e hard lines to CEO and Chairman and dotted lines to Head of Football Admin. Whether that changes with different personell is open.
Jim Saratinos falls into the inexperienced category that can only be learnt by the process being enacted. But he has the makings of a very good administrator now that he has more than dotted lines to follow.
The Chairman has recently changed and I can only go on a nomination like Fongy who says he is a good operator. For anyone that Chairs our board that is a big rap from Frankie.
The board itself is another matter and you will find that they are pretty toothless in directional terms based on the more dictatorial management other clubs have. Just the same the outlier is Penrith and they have a similar structure to us without billionaire "sugar daddies" HOE calls them. Matt Cameron, their GM and administration staff follow the strategies and direction of their head coach Ivan Cleary.
Just remember that the CEO of Penrith is Matt Cameron. He joined the Panthers in 2012 as a high-performance manager. A former woodwork teacher who had no experience as a GM or CEO prior to Penrith. He learnt his experience at management watching Parramatta F### everything up and then not do the same at Penrith.
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Correct, do we think that 1.3 will be coming directly off The Knights cap for DylBoobs ? Not a chance. He's probably earning 300k p/a of it as Chairman of the Pasha Bulka historical society .
In regards to what Wayne's did up there , yeah everyone knows who the good players are , but it's the blokes yet to make it , or who've been good enough but had a few speed humps along the way , who demonstrate the right attitude to make it that he was able to identify to fill the gaps that made the difference. Watching that docco and hearing why he wanted certain players , and why others didn't impress him as much after meeting them as they did simply watching them play , is what made the difference.,
I wouldn't be too sure about that wiz, usually when a players signing amount is announced, whether correct or not, it does not count 3rd party deals as officially they can't be part of the signing contract.
True true
I think he's a bit more than just a salary cap manager.
As controversial as he is his fingers are well spread around the nrl identifying and helping build good nrl sides and talent identification is one of those traits.
https://www.nrl.com/news/2018/05/15/warriors-sign-peter-osullivan-a...
I read an interesting article about O'Sullivan, and recruitment staff in general, that the best ones can tell the difference between a $500k player (for example) and a $600k player (for example). This aligns with his comments in the Dolphins doco about how the biggest risk in rugby league isn't missing out on a signing, it's being stuck with him on too much. So where we missed out on the likes of Mahoney and Papali'i, many Parra fans were off the opinion that we lowballed them and should've just offered them as much as the Dogs and Tigers did. But why should we allow desperate rivals to dictate we overpay our players? We were flat out trying not to overpay our senior leaders, many of whom ended up struggling to stay on the field, ruining our 2023 title shot. Then when the coach got the arse, most of them gave up.
Tricky one with a lot of ambiguety, we lost a lot of senior players at the end of 2022, but these were decisions made 2021.
Everyone knows who the good players are ? not so sure of that either, we have found a few that were better than some expected. Our KT Medal winner this year being one. We did well with Hopgood for the first season, didn't want him halfway through season gone, now one of our best "again".
Ilongi comez into the process and on another scale, so does JAC. A different one again is Russell and then we have every one's favourite in Matto and should we mention DB.
Is Penisini off the Merry Go Round yet? and what about Bailey?.....Paulo has also been in the basket on occasions of end of career, no bloody good etc.
Me thinks we can kid ourselves as much as you like and love it when right and hate when wrong!
Never a truer word spoken, being stuck with a player on too much for too long is the worst outcome possible.
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