Quote: sally cinnamon "Interesting reading some of the names on here. Those Hudds teams of 1999 to 2000 that were wooden spoonists by miles actually had players that were decent players at other clubs
I think that it's easy to build a good side on paper. But it's much harder to build a good culture that delivers a winning side on the pitch.
The Giants had good players at that time, but they had terrible training facilities and poor coaching. Some of those players were talented, but didn't have the mental approach to be professional athletes. Some of them, frankly, were stealing money at the end of their careers.
You'll be aware of the effect of culture on a team, being a Wire fan. Tony Smith swept away the amateurish drinking club culture of Paul Cullen and his mates, and delivered you three Cups and the LLS. All done without a huge turnover of players.
The coaches the Giants had for their first two seasons were Garry Schofield, who was very inexperienced and, I suspect, incapable of understanding or responding when the players couldn't do things on the field he could do easily. Followed by Mal Reilly, whose coaching style basically involved shouting at the players and bragging about how much tougher than them he was.
By the time John Kear turned up, the whole culture was poisoned by the disastrous merger and, being from the Sheffield half, he probably had no chance of getting things right. His considerable skills and talents were wasted.
It took Tony Smith to crack the culture at the club open and start building a proper team, much as he later did at Leeds and Warrington. Jon Sharp built on that, as did Nathan Brown and now Paul Anderson. Now we sit happily at the top of SL.
As I get older, the more I realise that most people can achieve incredible things but they have to have the right environment and support. Building that environment and support is the really difficult part and is the key to almost all successes.
