It’s well overdue that the club hears directly from its members and fans. For too long, we’ve had a Head of Football who has mismanaged contracts, missed key recruitment targets, allowed homegrown talent to walk, and overseen player acquisitions that simply haven’t delivered.
The message to the club should be clear and unequivocal: we demand better. Our recruitment and retention strategy is failing. It's failing the club, failing the Head Coach and his staff, and failing the players who are being asked to do more with less.
Matt Beach and Jim Sarantinos—how can you stand by and accept the performance of the current Head of Football?
The best time to act was years ago. The next best time is now.
Sack Mark O’Neill!
Replies
Sing it loud!!! He's gotta go.
Get Trump to put a contract on him.
What most people can't understand is why we haven't signed anyone in this moment. We are at a critical point. Even just 2 signing , for example timoko and sua, would make a huge difference to our squad. I am starting to think we have no money. The ceo trying to get injury relief doesn't help. Mon needed to strike weeks ago b4 we have jersey flegg players filling first grade.
Timoko was panned by this site and Sua has only now arisen again.....KKK went(going) to Dragons because of his frienship with Sua....Sua therefore wanting to go anywhere is questionable, not the least to Parramatta.
Whose are the Jersey Flegg players filling in at First Grade that do not deserve their place in the side?
Pops, It wasn't the Singo fun-ride helicopters or Sua beach parties. Keaon Koloamatangi had $5m other reasons that only the Dragons and 1EE R&R would pay. Good buy. He'll be recruited in my Supercoach team. Already have Haas. Easy peasy.
If you had any idea, players that want to leave will leave. It is a collective of situations that sway players to head to new clubs & sometimes it's our own players that block their careers like Browny & Moses have done to juniors.
as for recruitment, we all know how it works, unless your paining overs, it's difficult to bring a player to your club, you can clearly see where they want to go so a lot of this is out of our hands, Dragons are having the same problem. We start paying overs, people like you whinge he not worth that amount, to be truthful I this first time in a long time they are getting things right. Keeping a lot of our juniors, but we need to land a big name. You name them!!
How do we entice a Kieran Foran Zac Lomax Mitchell Moses to Parra are there common denominators that used to be here that aren't here now wheather this is TPAs certain people behind the scenes a certain coach I don't know but whatever it is we need to find it and find it quickly.
This is a conservatism thing I think - Jim came in after Bernie and they had a very, very clear job to do which was to bring governance, structure and process to what was a very poorly run organisation. They did, have done and continue to do an amazing job. Doing things right is in the DNA of folks like Jim and Bernie.
Here's our challenge, the NRL is now run by our main man Peter V'Landys. He is not known for doing things right, he is know for getting things done. He responds to people who get things done, not to people who want to do things right.
Let's look at a few recent examples:
Do we have the right people in place for the PVL era where wheeling and dealing are the way of getting things done? Leadership needs to be right for the situation at hand, there's no "perfect leadership" that works in all circumstances.
Jim has done and is doing a fantastic job of running a well structured, compliant, governed, by the letter organisation that is and has set us up for success. But if we look at the clubs that are actually banking that success...they seem to keep getting away with things that we wouldn't. The seem to keep getting rewarded with things that we don't. Things just... happen. Players get signed, clauses get ignored, the maths doesn't maths but we all just keep going about our day.
I think we need someone or someones added to our leadership who are a cat amongst the pigeons and who work in a PVL world in a PVL way. Gus at the Bulldogs, he plays by his own rules (and those rules change by the day) and he gets results. You don't want to know how he gets it done...plausible deniability is a great thing. But he gets it done.
If we want to land the big fish we need some people in our ranks who "get shit done" and we just won't ask them for the receipts. Ask yourself this - could the Storm have become the giants they are if they didn't hold 2 sets of books for all those years? Could the Sharks have risen to a premiership so fast if it weren't for the peptides holding their players together? Could the Bulldogs have recruited the roster they have if it wasn't for some shenanigans from Gus?
To win in the NRL, especially in the PVL era, you need a bit of grit. I don't think we have it in our setup currently, because I think we specifically destroyed it all when we had to (after we were put into administration). And I think it's time we started strategically injecting a bit of it back.
I agree with what you have said Cappy, the perfect fitting of this is make the GM Football position vacant along the lines I presented and see what applications are forthcoming.
Two people stand out to me ....Shane Richardson fits your model of a "doer" but when I suggested his name a good friend of mine ex player, dyed in the wool Parra fan and he was "horrorfied" at the suggestion, reckons he left Tigers with enormous clouds......I note that he is still involved and close to the NRL advising on PNG and a Western Brisbane Club....Yes he is still exactly what your looking for face value.
Second one is Gus Gould....love him or hate him, he will fix the problem, what damage he does in the process we would have to wait and see.....Titled General Manager Football both these blokes would have the coach reporting to him, the Administration (maybe MON) reporting to him and he in turn would report to the CEO.
As an aside, I personally would also make the CEO role "Executive Chairman" push Beach back to the board, Saratinos as Executive Chairman can then control the board from this decision making position.
That last one is for the corporate lawyers to "go figure" but would give us a much stronger dictatorial presence and Saratinos is well balanced for the role.
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