Let me give you an example of what I mean by the heading.

A general during a battle focuses his attention on an objective, in the context of the battle it is of little value, but continues to throw men and resources to achieve the objective forgetting about the overall battle which stalls, this is called the fog of war.

This is what I think is happening to us now, such as picking Kelly at halfback and hoping for a different outcome. Apparently we are resigning him as well for backup.(the fog). WTF!

Now Kelly, as everyone knows, is hopeless but apparently not the coach or DA the man in charge of R & R (the fog). Now lets look at Matterson, his logical successor, who has been shown the door. We signed him for 3 years only last year when he was a champion but now he is a dud. How did that happen? Last year he was in the NYC team that came 3rd and should/could have won the premiership. He was also picked for a representative team so he was considered the best in his position for either Aust or NSW. When Sandow was dropped to Wenty earlier this year they were 2nd last and they played a team coming 3rd. Wenty thrashed the team scoring 8 tries and Mattersom had a blinder (as did the whole team) and set up 2 tries. He showed to me that he could play at that level and would improve when paired with a decent half. He is in the top 25 but for some reason we asked for and got dispensation to play Kelly instead (the fog).

The undeniable truth of any team sport is a good coach will make a poor team better while a poor coach will make a good team worse. Currently we have poor coaches in both Wenty and NYC. 

Now lets look at a criteria that perhaps all coaches should apply to their players and that is value for money (VFM). This is a value assigned to each player by assessing their skills for the same position they play and what they are paying him. They could be simply ranked by very low, low, medium and high. If I retain that player instead of that player am I achieving VFM?

Based on that critera how would you rank Kelly as compared with Matterson. Kelly would be VL as regardless of what you pay him he has little skill whereas Matterson probably ranked L but could achieve M based on his potential. Ideally all your halves should be ranked M and above.

Now the other comparison I want to make is Hoppa compared with Goodall, another champion player last year who has become a dud this year and looks like leaving us. We know what Hoppa brings and he has many flaws in his game but has been offered a new contract reported to be worth $350kpa. To me his VFM is L while Goodall, who is an unknown quality at NRL level, but is probably paid < $80kpa but has two attributes that Hoppa will never have, size and speed, would be ranked M.

Ideally all players in a team should be ranked M and above and the lower ranked should be let go. What we are doing is retaining lowly ranked players and getting rid of higher ranked players (the fog).

We are literally throwing the baby and the bath out and retaining the bath water. However without a container we cannot even retain the bath water (the fog).

I have followed this team for at least 55 years and am tiring fast from supporting it when they continue shooting themselves in the foot. When will the fog lift, when will the coaching staff wake up! This team will never amount to anything with the current practices in place.

                                                 PLEASE BA & DA WAKE UP!!! 

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  • BA is a 2 bit bum of a bush coach!! Oh hang on I thought you wrote the fong of coaching, apologies.

  • I would certainly hope so Brett but tell me would you resign Kelly?

  • Very well said , couldn't agree more.....The whole place stinks'
    !!!!
  • I am slowly losing faith in our coaching staff and what they offer to our teams in all grades. A coaches job is to get the best out of players and to have them performing at their best week in week out. Unfortunately I have not seen this the past 2 years and as Glen suggests many players have become duds in a short time frame. Hopefully I am proven wrong but I am starting to believe BA isn't the coach many of us expected him to be.
    • I think he did ok last year wayne, except the last 2 games, but he's really struggled this year. I've seen other teams devastated by injuries in the past but they seemed to cope a lot better than we have.

    • What I forgot to say in the blog is that BA and DA are blaming the players for their poor form and not where it lies, at the feet of the Wenty and NYC coaches. This is another example of the fog clouding their judgement.

    • At the time I thought so to FME, but in hindsight I'm not so sure. I think a lot of our success last year was due to Hayne and Sandow. We had some big losses last year and the back end of the year was a massive disappointment. No surprise that both Hayne and Sandow were both very quite during this time as well.
  • Nothing has changed in 5 years. Noone takes responsibility. Eels sadly lack attitude and just go through the motions without a care in the world.
  • No player has improved this year. Some are going backwards.
  • What's Toovey doing next year? Does he want a motivators job.
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