Quote: Wires71 "Sally I totally agree with your well reasoned post from a rugby perspective, however I am concerned about the business implications of effectively giving up on this season in the pursuit of "jam tomorrow".
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There's nothing else we can do, there's no point blowing cash chasing instant signings of average but available players to try and make us finish 9th rather than 11th.
I think supporters will respond to a genuine strategy of using the season for development, if a core of players is identified and begins to emerge under Smith and in the second half of the season we have some good committed team performances, that will give the crowds something to appreciate rather than the false dawns we've been fed in the past.
The problem with the crowds at the moment is that there's a lot of people who have just given up on the club and can't be bothered any more. Going back to 2000 when we brought Langer, Gee and Nikau, we've had a lot of false dawns where the excitement levels have been raised in the town only for us to be left deflated. We were excited when Gleeson and Fa'afili heralded the new age in the new stadium, we were excited when Johns came in at the end of 2005 (the one time in recent years when I actually started thinking we had a sniff of winning Super League), every year we had a crop of international signings coming in and the board talked of silverware and Wembley, and when it didn't materialise we said it was because of injuries to the first teamers, we had to play the kids, if the first teamers had been there we would have won something.....then there would be more big names coming in to raise expectation for the next year. The cynics amongst us started to recognise this cycle in about late 2006 but lots of the more optimistic fans were swept along in the tide of belief for two more years after that.
The reason things are different now is the expectation appears to have been scratched, I doubt anybody will mention silverware for a while at Warrington now because our tails are firmly between our legs. Yet now we've got a far better set of personnel running the on field show (people like Smith, Bastian, Farrell) than we did during the years of living the false dream. Smith will bring some integrity to the club which the supporters will respond to, the crowds this season will drop off but I with the right (not necessarily the most exciting) signings for next year and careful development of the players who do have talent already at the club we will be a competitive team under Smith which is disciplined in defence and offloads and supports like Smith teams do.
Look at the effect Nathan Brown is having on Huddersfield, if Warrington start doing that next season which is easily achievable by Smith, I can guarantee Warrington will have strong crowds because it will be what they have been waiting for.
I feel much better about Warrington now Smith's here than I have for the past few years, I've been predicting this recession for a while whereas now I feel like I can predict the recovery.
