As we transition with our rebuilding phase, I'm wondering if we have gone about it the wrong way around.
We have a great Home ground, we have great fans that will support the club, we have a world class training centre, we have the new constitution and Leagues Club to rival most others, We have the shiny new coach and assistant coach's, and we have a world class Halfback, with a new culture developing.
It appears that we have been checking off for some time all the ingredients required to have a winning club. This brings me to what I see as a major fault within our club.
It appears we are able to identify the players we wish to sign, there are many examples of that within our system right now, none better then Iongi, Lomax, Addo Carr and Walker. However there also appears to be a problem with getting classy players that are being courted by other teams over the line and sigining with our club. The 4 players I mentioned were not being courted by any other club.
So how do we fix it. If we are identifying where the club was falling behind with all of the above and we set about turning it around and fixing it, to the boards credit, then surely the same Board can see we are seriously lacking in the art of getting a quality player that other clubs want to join our squad.
What is it that is lacking in this area. Is it a lack of understanding of what makes the player tick, are possible recruits issues, fears, not being addressed during the negotiations, is it a stigma that players don't like our club, Is it the rookie coach might not be good, is it a lack of third party deals or investment clubs etc. Do the player managers not get on with our club. There must be something that is turning off potential recruits. Over the last couple of years we have lost so many players and potential coach's for that matter, that the club has identified as wanting or wanting to keep, and we havnt been able to get them accross the line.
So I do wonder who at our club is identifying the problem, and what needs to be done to turn this around. Over the next 12 months, we as a club have a huge war chest of salary cap $$ to be spent, but it won't matter if the club cannot sign the good 1st choice players they are targeting.
It makes me wonder, what our club would look like if we were to recruit say Gus Gould. Would that even be possible. I do wonder what type of $$ would it take to hire someone like him. We seem to be very light on in the reputation and signing power of our current head of football. I'd happily pay Gus Gould $2m a season to be our recruitment spokesperson, the man that makes the deal, that courts the new player. Surely someone of his experience and stature would be a crucial and club defining signing. Perhaps the very last piece of the Eels puzzle.
Im no fan of Mark O'Neill head of football operations, I have made that very clear. So how do we get the club to at least review what mistakes have been made or continue to be made that turns so many players away from us.
I think it's crucial for any future success, more so then any one player. We should be going for the best of the best people out there to be working on our contract negotiations and selling our vision to new recruit prospects. We search high and low for the best layers, then why don't we do that at Boss level, at management level.
Im not sure of whom we should even target if we were to replace Mark O'Neill, but i am of the strongest opinion that the club to move forward must as a matter of urgency delve very deep into what is going wrong at this level, and fix it. We have an oppurtunity with our war chest to really go after some serious talent right now,
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I agree Coryn, it's becoming a glaring problem. If we are to reach higher, we must have better administration.
Correct you mention not getting players over the line it's because at the end of the day we don't have a closer.
Using Baseball pitching as a guide you have a starter the approach to a given talent.
Secondly once interest is gauged enter middle relief converted we present our offer and pitch our plan for the mentioned
The CLOSER this is the key lock him in no distractions finish the transaction this is the part we are missing we are seemingly get most of the way and fall over at the end.Like you've mentioned this CLOSER could be JR as an example but this is where we are deficient.
Bluey, love you like a brother....but I need to get you to understand the grey area's arising from your last couple of posts.
1. The options that Brown had were to keep him in the club with incentives to remain here past 2/3 years on his next contract. The utilisation of the option was no different to him signing a contract for 3 years and going through exactly the same process on the Ist November, why the option was set with a mid year negotiation I do not understand. BUT it was not the reason we lost him. Fortune can favour us, given his burnout we may have got lucky. Newcastle not so! How do you think those poor bastards feel?
2. R&R and HOF did not lose Galvin. Issac Moses went to Beach (Parra chairman) as a last resort. He told him, go a few dollars more and I think I can get him. Beach knew we were offering 800k and Dogs 750, he basically said NO way. Isaac Moses was in this chin deep and put himself in a no lose situation. Cunning pricks but you cannot blame Parra R&R for losing him. That story was on Sen on monday mid morning.
Can you not see that MON could do no more from a negotiation perspective.....we lost him "bad luck" or is it good luck?
Finally I have said how lucky we are in losing the juniors we wanted to retain, because we can do better. Would Talagi being playing FG with us now (I hope not) and yes he has improved, basically because "mother hen" has a wing firmly around him. Sander's is not good enough to play half this year when Foggy was injured and not next year either going on the rhetoric and then there is the sole cause of all these events Dyllan Brown for whatever the reason he is not a shadow of the player he was.
Yes sack Mons and the R&R team, the newcomers but will still be representing the "stigma" unless you get the big 3, btw I wouldn't want Bennett compared to the development stage we are going through or Galvin if he flipped and changed his mind. The real losers there were Tigers, god knows what they did wrong!
All great points Pops, and I understand what the media "general consensus" says about most of the players we have failed to resign or sign. However we as a club seem to get more then our fair share of "not signing with us, at the last moment". I see you have identified "Stigma" as a potential issue.
You;ve also identified in the Galvin case we were perhaps used as pawns to maybe up his price at the dogs. This perhaps goes to one of the issues, are our negotiators tone deaf, and not experienced enough to read the room so to speak. Are our negotiators perhaps so poor that a lot of managers are able to use us as whipping boys to up their clients price. They are all interesting questions i feel, and questions the club should be trying to answer to improve our negotiation / closing player contracts record.
Popsical,
Typically great & very fair points. Well laid out.
Thanks Nos Karen is hanging in there, see her original specialist this Friday, The nature of the emergency at time precluded his involvment, midnight surgical team put together for a Sat morning op done well but she is still not well. She has now lost 95% of her large colon.
Thanks for your kind comments on the post and I think it is .great we can have the type of discussions we are having with Bluey and Coryn....nobody getting angry and just expressing thoughts and opinions.
That said I will take up a couple of points you have raised.
Not signing an idividual in demand player is not a concern for me as much as a discussion point being addressed. Lets say we lost Galvin because we were out thought and cleverly used. The real damage there is our reputation which that discussion point eccenuates. Semantic otherwise IMO.
I have back peddled all over the place with Mons, basically agreeing since the coaching change that his days being numbered. That said I am a decent person to the extent of the biases and the way he is addressed every time as the person responsible. I dont accept that prima facie as I do not see why he has been retained if he suffers from incompetence.
When we have to address his capacity because someone here says he was a failure in a grocery division of a supermarket takes things too far, when justifying his capacity. I have repeatedly said he is wrongly titled and can only assume he has good offerings in other parts of the business or why keep him.
I have deliberately trolled our friend Bob Mertens (Merkin) who says so many outrageous thing's about people and he has the knowledge of a flea market rat. We should (and I'm not perfect) but try and present some humour than directly lying and expressing opinions as he does in a way would stop a lot of people from being on here and part of our discussions.
Its poor credability of the site and he offers nothing. Other people on here such as Wiz and his followers are rusted on members and nobody that counts take's much notice of him/them. I enjoy arguing with Wiz but he is outrageous.i.e the biases against Mon, Brown, and Moses almost go to a point of obsession for him.
I wrote a blog on Mon's retirement with the thrust of it being, maybe we should have a professional negotiator such as an ex or current player manager, who up on the techniques, the actual contract and how TPA's are used either against us or through naiveity.
The responses to that blog went straight back to playing the man not the ball.
Hey Pops,
Very sorry to hear Karen is still not in a good place, fingers crossed the specialist has a strategy for her because sounds like she's in serious discomfort? You're a good man, Pops, she's got good support.
I didn't see your blog sorry, will have a look. But what you are saying about the negotiatior is what I am getting at with the pitching process. Its an art-form, no doubt, some have it naturally & others don't.
Pops, its all speculation, but are we too mechanical, too lost in numbers? Its definitely been a critique of the past from players, agents, and journos.
Many complain about him but Phil Gould sells players a clear vision, how they will be used, their development path, their future, and whether true or utter horseshit (as Mahoney is finding out) he creates an allure & he signs good players.
Pops, individuals aside, is there a chance for someone to come in & evolve our negotation process (as you mentioned)? Because from the outside (again specualtion) it appears like phone calls & emails, meeting agents at games etc.
Maybe thats common now?
But that Centre of Excellence is phenomenal. Its a strong sales pitch on its own. Walking targets through those facilities & into the nicest meeting room in the place, and outlaying a clear & unique vision for individuals, can do a lot more than a phone call with a '$$ offer'.
Maybe they are doing this already? I don't know, but to the point of Bluey's blog, we are all trying to figure out where things are breaking down consistently in that process, because as you mentioned, our reputation is what gets hit when we miss publicly like this - right or wrong - and it impacts the next one.
What happens at 5/8 is going to be interesting Pops...
Coryn, you'll never have one good thing to say about the administration after you cried yourself to sleep over the bush coach, and his two sons ousting crying like a biatch
Ask yourself - why did Galvin ever consider the Eels after he asked for a release midway through 2024, when D Brown was contracted here.
Your just a cry baby who'll find anything to pin on the Eels administration, who are moving in the right direction with Ryles at the helm.
Well I didn't like the way we went about the Arthur saga , mostly because I know that MON didn't give him the players he asked for , however I also didn't like how Arthur wanked off Gutherson and a few others, so I was neutral to him going , but didn't like the re-hiring process .
My point is , I also didn't like the management of the coach sacking, but I was super critical of the board and MON long before that. Just saying..
oh and I also think JA was judged unfairly , he was shit , but he wasn't any shitter than a bunch of young kids that were judged ( or not judged I should say ) as just that , young kids . If JAs last name was Volkman we wouldn't have heard boo about how shit he was. He would've been the young kid filling a hole .
"I know that MON didn't give him the players he asked for"
How did you know that Wizzy, did he tell you while you were praying to the Lomac Apostles.
BA was a well "quantified" autocrat, if anything he would not let MON do shit unless it was directed by him. Saratinos said afterwards BA was never denied anything he asked for by the R&R Commitee.
Its one thing to have "hyperbole" (Arthur wanking players off) its another to keep making up lies.
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