I take the point that we haven't had much time since he resigned (although reading between the lines I'm not sure there weren't some signs that couks or should have been picked up on. And Seward announced halfway through the year that the club's no 1 priority was resigning hayne. By that measure that is worse than a failure, because they didn't even hold him to his current contract).
Even if he'd stayed, our finish to the season strongly suggested we needed to supplement our roster to become a force in the comp. All we did was add some depth and no starch.
I dont really see this as an unreasonable rant. We should be realistic and analyse what's going on.
And I certainly don't believe fans have an obligation to be blindly positive and optimistic.
We haven't won a comp for nearly thirty years. We have lost our greatest player in that time to a competitor who we courted a relationship with. We continue to offload some of our most tented juniors, and can only sign players who are not in real demand at other clubs.
It suggests that our management remains dysfunctional and some of our key appointments are not true market leaders.
In that situation we shouldn't simply wave the Pom poms and accept the same mediocre results - we should speak up.
I agree 100% that we should speak up - however I would challenge about the timing and manner in which we do this.
Up until we (the members) spoke up and installed 3P we had gone 20+ years without a premiership and we demanded significant change from the new board and management. They delivered (albeit on the back of Hayne and Fui) a short term panacea in the form of a 2009 GF appearance however that could not be sustained and cracks began appearing all over the joint.
The cracks continued widening to the extent that in 2013/14 we again spoke up and replaced most of the 3P influence at the Board level (and subsequently the management and coaching level) with Sharp, Seward, BA and co. This team has been in place for one full season only in which until our players capitulation in the final 2 rounds of 2014 we were fighting for a spot in the 8 for the first time since 2009.
Up until the 13th October 2014, the current team of Sharp, Seward, BA and co. had identified what they believe were weaknesses in our playing squad (for all external appearances these looked to be experience; attitude; merkinness) and were recruiting to not only provide these characteristics to our young and inexperienced squad through players like Watmough and Wicks but also to build depth and competition for spots in the starting 17 with players like Robinson, Crooks, Champion, McPherson, Nelson. This was a good approach given we have skilled and talented youngsters but have clearly lacked the characteristics I mentioned above and the depth to keep the pressure on the young guys.
On October 14th (whether known in advance or not) our marquee player decides to announce that he is leaving the club effective immediately. Since then and while our coach has been on holidays and no doubt unable to dedicate the effort he would like to closing this sudden gap, we have announced the signing of Robinson (already done before the Hayne announcement), potentially a Super League prop and possibly an experienced NRL standard centre in Takairangi - all within 7 days only.
This doesn't suggest to me that our management are dysfunctional, but rather that they had identified what needed to be done and were doing that and then were hit with the Hayne departure and have yet to finalise and implement a mitigation plan.
I think we need to give it more than a week to see what transpires before we hit the panic button and start accusing management of being amateur and dysfunctional but maybe that's just me - I'd rather planned and considered action than reactive behaviour to satisfy the demands of impatient members who want instant cures all the time. RS was hired as a reaction to SK's dismal performance and look how well that did us.
