Quote DaveO="DaveO"So the coach is blameless for the loss of form and made no contribution to loses in key games such as selecting a rookie full back in the semi final? Then surely by the same token the fact we won the league is nothing to do with him either. That was all down to the players a well? Lima and Finch were according to you already on a plane and Wane just left it at that? Tommy gets injured and so it must have been Lockers who decide to play at 6 in the CC semi-final not Wane's choice.
The only conclusion to draw from your post is we don't need a coach.'"
once again Dave you choose entirely to misread someone elses post. please read carefully what i said and do not add your own interpolation to suit your own agenda. the only conclusion from your post is that you are unable to read someone else thoughts in an impartial way.
1 the topic of the post was squad rotation, not the de-ification of SW. at no point have i said that SW was blameless, just that he is being cast as a pariah for winning the LLS and losing narrowly to a champion outfit in 2 semis.
2 the thrust of my argument is that the marquee players are MORE culpable than SW for the NARROW losses to Leeds. i have never said that SW was blameless. the point of big name players is that they stand up at the key points in the season, Lima did this when we won the CC. Finch did this in the run in to the GF win. However, last season, once they had sorted out their futures, their form dipped badly. We've seen it before from imports and we shall see it again. It is very difficult for teams to cover this kind of drop in form from players who are SUPPOSED to be the leaders. It doesnt matter who the coach is, if the players hunger has gone NO ONE will motivate them.
3 please read my post. the loss in the SF to leeds i said was down to us losing to a better team. this happens in cup comps. no conspiracy. no rant at ST, who played appallingly to gift leeds possession and tries. they won fair and square.
4 accordingly to you, a team should never have dips in form. they should continue to win regardless. as i stated, we hit our purple patch mid season. this happens throughout a season. i suspect that you are the only person that blames the coach for not being able to maintain probably the best run of form in 15 years. the good thing about the final third was that we continued to win, despite not being on top form.
5 if you read my comments regarding the play off, you will see that I again blame no individuals. if we had been given the penalty with a minute to go, which the ref could easily have done, we would not be having this conversation. the play-offs are a cup competition, and whilst we could have played better and not let the ref be the decider of the game, it all came down to 2 judgement calls. as for the blooding of the rookie FB, i dont recall that it was any of his mistakes that led to leeds scoring, so why single him out ?
i will just summarise my views again
1 SW in his first season in charge did i good job of rotating the squad. by no means perfect but a lot better than MM did the previous 2 seasons
2 it was SWs first season, and given the expectations at the start of the year, he did pretty well. in fact, lets be honest, his performance was as good as any of our coaches bar MM since the advent of SL.
3 the senior pros let us down badly in the big games. Finch, Lima and Sam all were very disappointing.
4 Losing Tommy was huge. It was only in his absence that we truly appreciated his impact.
5 Losing to leeds in cup matches is no disgrace, as they have proved to be the best in SL. they even raised their game again last Friday to give the Aussies a real good fight.
