Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"This winning culture stuff sounds great, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the current era of relative player power, especially among younger players.
In recent seasons something has been creeping in to RL, where a young player comes in to the team and immediately has a load of cheerleaders on social media, and on forums, and people round him telling him how good he is. Before long he's on twitter becoming a mini celebrity and developing a precious ego. Then if his performances start to tail off, if the coach doesn't tolerate it and starts giving him home truths or drops him, all hell will break loose. The player moans to his mates, who go and post on forums along with his cheerleaders, cryptic tweets go out, rumours start that the player is unhappy, and the bad guy in the eyes of the fans is the coach. The coach is the one who is ruining young talent and risking him go elsewhere.
If Leuluai starts being tough on players that don't meet his expectations of attitude next year, I wonder if we will start seeing posts on here about 'rumours are that Leuluai is unsettling the players, causing rifts in the dressing room, X wants out it will be a shambles if we lose yet another of our great talents'.'"
I know you’re emphasising the irony a little here but it’s an interesting point. Price has said he wants to instil the right attitude from the juniors right he way up through the system and that he’ll be working very closely and be very hands-on with those aspects. I’m not saying that will serve to control all bad attitudes but it may help to give more realistic expectations and encourage juniors to bide their time.
If you look at Wigan, there’s a high level of discipline and standards from the bottom up (since Maguire?) and despite the many youngsters that roll off their production line and don’t end up staying at the club, you don’t hear of many attitude problems over being dropped etc. Look at Tierney - he’s Wigan royalty yet he’s accepted his place and it’s not on the flanks of his hometown club.
The sooner all the players subscribe to the new regime, the better. Most of the seniors seem enthusiastic about it and wanted a freshening-up of ideas.
