Quote: easyWire "I’m not sure it’s just a case of ‘not good enough’.
Firstly, with Hill we would have had to sign him up for two years at a salary likely to be similar to his last contract. If we had ended up limping out of the playoffs again this year, we’d be on here ranting about not spending our money more appropriately.
Secondly, it was a question of removing the ‘old guard’. The coaching team had been tasked by the club with changing our playing style, leadership, and general attitude issues. I have no knowledge of the inner workings of the squad, but I’d be willing to bet that the coach told the club he needed to identify the root cause of why an expensively assembled team never managed to equate to the sum of its parts. I’m sure that a stale ‘old guard’ with a negative mindset wasn’t going to help change our usual damp squib grand final push.
And that brings me to Cooper. I really like Cooper and I think he’s a great prop. A great leader he clearly is not. It’s difficult when a club has established and popular parts of the woodwork (and in the leadership group) fighting against what the coach has been tasked with.
When you have two players so ingrained in the club, it’s hard to expect to revolutionise the mindset of the squad when said players push back. I guess we’ll know soon if Powell has what it takes to turn our now lesser quality squad into a team that is actually greater than the sum of its parts. He won’t have long to do it, mind!'"
thats typical fans 'degree in hindsight'.you'd had fans calling him rotten for giving penalties away and losing us games, when he left it was a disasterous decision to let him go
Same thing going on with toby king now, "he's useless, he can't defend, we're overpaying him, the board making terrible recruitment decisions"
Whereas at the time, he was the form centre in the league, he was an england international, just come off being a dream team member, people were saying the board were making a terrible recruitment decision if they let an academy player leave to a rival (saints)