We will either be Premiers or runners up forwards win you premierships Souths and Parra have the best forward pack Parra slightly better backs at this stage.
Yes, I share Appin's belief that a group of powerful forwards is an absolute and compulsory pre-requisite for success. The eels have good forwards, but they lack our balance.
Lang knows how to use forwards as well as a thing or two about attack.
I used to watch the Panthers attack, he believes in lots of players in motion, deceit and confusion for opposition defences. He will exploit patterned defence and sorely test conventional defensive thinking. Within 10 minutes of a game, he would have tweaked the oppositions game-plan and provided instructions on how to decimate it. Then its up to the boys.
It wont be big guys running one-out, it will be inside passes, angles, cut-outs and high balls with a rush of players ready to smash defences.
He is also a coach who trains his teams to be smashed up and keep coming back. If you look at the 2003 Grand Final, the Panthers were belted black and blue all game. They just kept responding, they answered all the questions. It was breathtaking. When Satts Junior pulled off that tackle of the century, it wasnt just him, it was the heart that Lang had given him. The desire.
I feel that following so many years of dissapointment, we can now expect footballing excellence.
I am more worried about injuries than anything else.
Desire and courage is one of the most difficult things to inject into tiring, fatigued and injured players. Lang is the master of its transmission. In will be built in to our players in every match they play. No more cheap surrenders, every game will life or death.
Against the odds, against reason and logic except to those in the know, Souths ahould be able to win the minor premiership. It may not be pretty or glamourous, but its a realistic and I must say, a very welcome expectation.
