Quote: Prince Buster "Correct The last press release by chester was the final straw for many players. There have been weeks of snide remarks about them over this season and it was obvious that eventually there would be a response.
Chris Chester is probably a decent bloke but he has spent his life in rugby league. Players are also people. He probably knows more about playing the game than most . However his ability to deal with people is very limited. You need a totally different skill set to do that and a life playing rugby league will not give you that. That is why good coaches are few and far between. People just think a person will make a good coach because he was a good player and can lead a team on the field. However it dosnt end there because a coach must be a good people manager and that is probably the most difficult part of the job.
Time to go Chris, just accept you are not up to it. You have probably tried your best but failed.'"
From someone who is not a Trin fan, that's how I see it from the outside looking in.
Ask yourself whether you would be motivated to bust a gut for an employer that:
- Didn't exactly offer the best renumeration anyway, but at least you can accept that as a trade-off for potentially a 2-year deal instead of a 1-year one.
- Was one of the last to agree a post-COVID pay deal with the players union.
- After agreeing said deal, made a sinister public comment that "we will remember those that didn't work with us" to the press.
- Went on a fan's forum to belittle the concerns of a player who felt he needed to take a second job during the lockdown, arguing "I wish I earned what he did when I was 21" (despite that likely being 30+ years ago).
- Has seen the company named and shamed by HMRC for breaching minimum wage regulations.
- Has backed his coach as he spoke to the media about sacking players in the coming weeks.
Carter is free to run the club how he wants and he and Chester are free to treat the players how they want (within the law), but they aren't free to expect that doing so will come without consequences and I would argue that recent results are a consequence of those actions. You can talk about the player's "professionalism" and "getting on with it", but the club has a duty to ensure that the players feel valued and motivated. I've worked for people who display the sort of behaviours that Carter seems to do in public and if there is only one thing that they are universally good at, it is demotivating and driving good people out of a business - and business results suffer as a result.
From the outside looking in, Wakefield's problems aren't necessarily about a lack of talent - the much bigger issue is about a lack of respect for the players and a poor culture at the very top.
