Should Mary be sacked?

[Tuddy]

Damn this is a good post. Thanks for the background 09, every single thing you said makes sense. It's really depressing, but it makes sense. It sounds like things are going to have to get a lot, lot worse before it gets better.

I just hope my 12 year old son can ride it out, we've only started to watch the games together this year and he's a real fan, but with some of the other teams out there playing really entertaining footy there's always a chance he might go for one of the winning teams. No one likes a loser, especially one that seems quite content being one.

 

[grouch]

Unfortunately, it might take a fair bit more than a few consecutive floggings before sanity prevails.

For a start, they waited until Price's winning percentage had fallen to 38% before they decided to act and Mary is sitting at 48%......that's a lot more heartache before he starts equaling Prices stats. In fact, we would have to lose the next 13 games straight for Mary to have a 38% win rate:shock:

Then there's the power struggle at play between Saints and Illawarra hierarchy. Mid season 2014, we were within a bees penis from re signing Bennett for 2015 and beyond and while these negotiations were underway, board member Sean O'Connor (1 of 4 Illawarra members on the board) was telling anyone in the Wollongong media who would listen that Mary was our preferred man. Now you can take this any way you choose, but to me, it was a deliberate attempt to derail negotiations with Bennett by giving the impression of an unstable board/club and as a "shot across the bow" of the establishment after the decision to take 2 games away from the Gong pissed off the Steelers contingency as that decision triggered interest payments (for breach of agreement) be made immediately to Bruce Gordon for a loan he gave the club. Also, if Bennett was signed, Mary (the Gongs favourite son) would have had to exit stage left (Bennett wouldn't of let him near the place) and certain Illawarra factions were feeling as though they were being dictated to by big brother. When Bennett gave us the flick, Mary was quickly given a 3 year deal and i believe this was a "peace offering" of sorts, designed to settle the unrest between the 2 JV organisations.............a weak and reactive decision in my opinion.

And then there's the DUI incident. If there was a genuine consideration by the powers to be to send Mary packing mid season, surely they had the perfect opportunity to set the wheels in motion when he was done for DUI. They could have taken that opportunity to stand Mary down for a couple of weeks (which is exactly what would of happened if one of our players were caught for DUI) and bring in Jason Demetriou to take over the side during this period and tell him he had an open license to put his stamp on the side and do what he saw fit. This would of at least given an opportunity to see what life looked like without Mary. But instead, we told him we were disappointed in him, gave him a fine (did we really:roll and told him to carry on regardless. Why this approach? why the double standards? Did the imminent Gordon deal negotiations have an impact on our decision to turn a blind eye? Was there some "if you do that i will do this" going on here? Unless you are part of the inner sanctum i guess you will never know, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.......

We appear to be on a highway to nowhere at the moment and i just don't see any attempt to program the GPS towards a destination. We are floundering as a playing unit with very little team growth week in and week out, in fact, most of our players are going backwards, we don't experiment, we play like we are coached to perform exactly the same game plan regardless of who our opposition is, our coach appears to be selfish and is putting his job before the team by being happy to grind to a close win or a close loss so as to finish in a spot on the ladder that is not low enough to sack him, but as a consequence not high enough to be a real finals contender, and the powers to be, the people who can change all this in an instant, seem to be too preoccupied in their own little power struggle and jockeying for position to have the time or inclination to make the tough decisions that need to be made in order to give us a fighting chance of success.

This is obviously only my opinion and might seem like total BS and a misinformed nonfactual hypothesis to most, but this shite is just too much like ground hog day to just be a speed bump on the highway to success. It's more like a mountain that has no peak, in fact, it's a freakin virus that just keeps on crippling. The longer virus is left to wreak havoc without treatment, the longer the road to recovery........Hope we all live long enough to see it, but i for one can't wait another 31 years.

Devastating but true

 

[Minh]

Dragons 09 shows how bad Steve Price was that Mary has to lose 13 in a row to equal him. Mary is a far more competent than Steve Price lets be honest here....
However he makes too many excuses and needs to make adjustments to his coaching structures and plans in attack. The team plays inhibited scared footy and that's not going to beat good teams.

 

[grouch]

Dragons 09 shows how bad Steve Price was that Mary has to lose 13 in a row to equal him. Mary is a far more competent than Steve Price lets be honest here.....

Lets truly be honest here: who cares if McGregor is better than Price. It's like saying a skunk is worse than a rat. Either way they both stink and have no business coaching a football team

 

[Minh]

Lets truly be honest here: who cares if McGregor is better than Price. It's like saying a skunk is worse than a rat. Either way they both stink and have no business coaching a football team

Most NRL coach's have similar win loss ratios of Mary. Unless it's a top line coach we are getting ie. Bennett, Bellamy or Hasler and throw Tony Smith in the mix as well, they won't make much difference with this playing roster with our main strike half Benji Marshall playing busted. I'm not a Mary advocate but we cannot simply replace him with Toovey or Cleary and expect us to be a heavy weight team without the roster.

 

[Country Dragon]

Most NRL coach's have similar win loss ratios of Mary. Unless it's a top line coach we are getting ie. Bennett, Bellamy or Hasler and throw Tony Smith in the mix as well, they won't make much difference with this playing roster with our main strike half Benji Marshall playing busted. I'm not a Mary advocate but we cannot simply replace him with Toovey or Cleary and expect us to be a heavy weight team without the roster.

IMO,our roster is not as bad as it's being coached at the moment.
I'm sure some other coaches out there wouldn't take long to improve our fortunes,don't forget Mary has the team he wants!

 

[grouch]

Most NRL coach's have similar win loss ratios of Mary. Unless it's a top line coach we are getting ie. Bennett, Bellamy or Hasler and throw Tony Smith in the mix as well, they won't make much difference with this playing roster with our main strike half Benji Marshall playing busted. I'm not a Mary advocate but we cannot simply replace him with Toovey or Cleary and expect us to be a heavy weight team without the roster.

Funny. First you were praising McGregor for simply being better than Price (despite the fact Price had the likes of Fien, a hooker, and Chase Stanley, a centre, to work with as halves and McGregor has Internationals all over the park), and now your line is he's no worse than anyone else.

Well, since Cleary and Toovey have both taken teams to grand finals, this makes you a McGregor advocate. Or drunk.

 

[dragonreddy]

Most NRL coach's have similar win loss ratios of Mary. Unless it's a top line coach we are getting ie. Bennett, Bellamy or Hasler and throw Tony Smith in the mix as well, they won't make much difference with this playing roster with our main strike half Benji Marshall playing busted. I'm not a Mary advocate but we cannot simply replace him with Toovey or Cleary and expect us to be a heavy weight team without the roster.

If we don't replace McGregor we can't possibly attract the players to make the club a Heavyweight,it has to start somewhere ,he has no clue .

 

[BrissyRedV]

[/B]


If we don't replace McGregor we can't possibly attract the players to make the club a Heavyweight,it has to start somewhere ,he has no clue .

Agree. Unless we get a quality coach who can attract players, all we will end up doing is paying overs for average first graders. What players honestly would see our style of footy and say to themselves that they would really like to play under that coach?

 

[Minh]

Funny. First you were praising McGregor for simply being better than Price (despite the fact Price had the likes of Fien, a hooker, and Chase Stanley, a centre, to work with as halves and McGregor has Internationals all over the park), and now your line is he's no worse than anyone else.

Well, since Cleary and Toovey have both taken teams to grand finals, this makes you a McGregor advocate. Or drunk.

not really, what I'm saying is his winning percentage is on par with most coach's such as Henry and Cleary....

 

[Minh]

[/B]


If we don't replace McGregor we can't possibly attract the players to make the club a Heavyweight,it has to start somewhere ,he has no clue .

Yes, but we need a really good coach otherwise it'll go around in circles like this....

 

[Minh]

Agree. Unless we get a quality coach who can attract players, all we will end up doing is paying overs for average first graders. What players honestly would see our style of footy and say to themselves that they would really like to play under that coach?

Agree, the style of footy is what makes Mary not attractive as an option for potential signings. They'd be handcuffed and suffocated, he needs to fix this aspect of his coaching but at least I am starting to see some more attacking footy the last two weeks.

 

[Minh]

Funny. First you were praising McGregor for simply being better than Price (despite the fact Price had the likes of Fien, a hooker, and Chase Stanley, a centre, to work with as halves and McGregor has Internationals all over the park), and now your line is he's no worse than anyone else.

Well, since Cleary and Toovey have both taken teams to grand finals, this makes you a McGregor advocate. Or drunk.

Wrong, Price had the core of our 2010 premiership winning team to work with, no excuses for Price he was simply woeful.

 

[TruSaint]

Wrong, Price had the core of our 2010 premiership winning team to work with, no excuses for Price he was simply woeful.

agree.

Price was aweful, and worse was the decision to extend his contract.

 

[Dragons 09]

I agree with what Minh is saying. We need change but we need to get it right. Mary needs to go but we can't just believe that anyone will be necessarily better. I have joked that my 6 year old son could do a better job than Mary (and he probably could lol), but If you look at the current or recent NRL coaches, Mary's stats are not too different from many others so we need to be careful what we wish for.

Mary 48%
Griffin 53%
Cleary 48%
Stuart 47%
Henry 44%
Arthurs 45%
Flanno 50% (although had some baggage previously to deal with)

It's not until you look at the consistent performers over numerous years where you start to see the coaches with respectable stats.

Bellamy 66%
Bennet 62%
Hasler 59%
Robinson 64%
Maguire 62%

I believe the better performing group (while obviously being decent coaches) also have something the lesser performing coaches don't have which certainly helps their stats. They have clubs that can attract TPA's, they have clubs who are prepared to be "creative" with regards the salary cap (I suspect Arthurs stats would have risen markedly if the Eels were more covert with their deceit), over recent times have all been clubs with real chances of winning premierships (what player doesn't want to play at a club like that and will often take under's to get that chance) and for the most part are "no nonsense" coaches who won't put up with mediocrity and won't be puppets to their respective boards.

Look what Bennett did when he came to us. He cleaned out the dead wood, stopped the jobs for the boys program, got the players he wanted, had every player believing in him and won us a premiership in his second year. He did it his way and didn't give 2 hoots about the power plays going on by a dis-functional board behind closed doors!

If we look from within Australia and to who is currently without a gig, Toovey with win stats of 58% is probably the best performer available. Not saying he's our man, but there have been a lot of names thrown around whose stats don't match his. What I will say however, is that we need an outsider who has no internal allegiances, is no one’s puppet and has pulling power with regards players and sponsors........unfortunately we had one, would only give him a 3 year deal when he wanted 5, won us a premiership, lost him along with some of our better talent, tried to get him back and f**kced that up, so our establishment decided the best thing to do was send us to purgatory for the subsequent 3 years.

Yes, we need a new coach, but it's waaaaaay more complicated than that. Anything short of a Bennett or Bellamy type character is unlikely to have a significant impact unless the core route of our problems gets A-holed along with Mary. Obviously Bennett and Bellamy are no chance, so if things don't change at the top of the tree, i can just see the next coach being another sacrificial lamb and a pawn in the establishments power plays and we will be on here writing the same old stuff next year and the year after that and..............

 

[Minh]

I agree with what Minh is saying. We need change but we need to get it right. Mary needs to go but we can't just believe that anyone will be necessarily better. I have joked that my 6 year old son could do a better job than Mary (and he probably could lol), but If you look at the current or recent NRL coaches, Mary's stats are not too different from many others so we need to be careful what we wish for.

Mary 48%
Griffin 53%
Cleary 48%
Stuart 47%
Henry 44%
Arthurs 45%
Flanno 50% (although had some baggage previously to deal with)

It's not until you look at the consistent performers over numerous years where you start to see the coaches with respectable stats.

Bellamy 66%
Bennet 62%
Hasler 59%
Robinson 64%
Maguire 62%

I believe the better performing group (while obviously being decent coaches) also have something the lesser performing coaches don't have which certainly helps their stats. They have clubs that can attract TPA's, they have clubs who are prepared to be "creative" with regards the salary cap (I suspect Arthurs stats would have risen markedly if the Eels were more covert with their deceit), over recent times have all been clubs with real chances of winning premierships (what player doesn't want to play at a club like that and will often take under's to get that chance) and for the most part are "no nonsense" coaches who won't put up with mediocrity and won't be puppets to their respective boards.

Look what Bennett did when he came to us. He cleaned out the dead wood, stopped the jobs for the boys program, got the players he wanted, had every player believing in him and won us a premiership in his second year. He did it his way and didn't give 2 hoots about the power plays going on by a dis-functional board behind closed doors!

If we look from within Australia and to who is currently without a gig, Toovey with win stats of 58% is probably the best performer available. Not saying he's our man, but there have been a lot of names thrown around whose stats don't match his. What I will say however, is that we need an outsider who has no internal allegiances, is no one?s puppet and has pulling power with regards players and sponsors........unfortunately we had one, would only give him a 3 year deal when he wanted 5, won us a premiership, lost him along with some of our better talent, tried to get him back and f**kced that up, so our establishment decided the best thing to do was send us to purgatory for the subsequent 3 years.

Yes, we need a new coach, but it's waaaaaay more complicated than that. Anything short of a Bennett or Bellamy type character is unlikely to have a significant impact unless the core route of our problems gets A-holed along with Mary. Obviously Bennett and Bellamy are no chance, so if things don't change at the top of the tree, i can just see the next coach being another sacrificial lamb and a pawn in the establishments power plays and we will be on here writing the same old stuff next year and the year after that and..............

Good post, especially about Bennett taking total control and doing things his way. That 2010 premiership was truly a virtuoso coaching performance getting the team playing to their strengths at close to 10/10's (it really was a pretty average attacking team compared to other recent premiership winners), he also had a fine group of players who gave it everything they had.

 

[Mr Red]

Good post, especially about Bennett taking total control and doing things his way. That 2010 premiership was truly a virtuoso coaching performance getting the team playing to their strengths at close to 10/10's (it really was a pretty average attacking team compared to other recent premiership winners), he also had a fine group of players who gave it everything they had.

Pretty easy when you have a group of players who believe in their coach and want to play for him. I'm doubting the current group have that same passion to play under Mary and don't believe in his ability...despite the numerous media articles from the players saying all the right cliche's

 

[Minh]

Pretty easy when you have a group of players who believe in their coach and want to play for him. I'm doubting the current group have that same passion to play under Mary and don't believe in his ability...despite the numerous media articles from the players saying all the right cliche's

It is far easier to buy into the coach's ideologies when at the time he had 6 premiership rings to back up his ideas....There's only 2 other coaches in Australia with similar credentials (multiple premierships) Bellamy and Hasler.

 

[dragonreddy]

I agree with what Minh is saying. We need change but we need to get it right. Mary needs to go but we can't just believe that anyone will be necessarily better. I have joked that my 6 year old son could do a better job than Mary (and he probably could lol), but If you look at the current or recent NRL coaches, Mary's stats are not too different from many others so we need to be careful what we wish for.

Mary 48%
Griffin 53%
Cleary 48%
Stuart 47%
Henry 44%
Arthurs 45%
Flanno 50% (although had some baggage previously to deal with)

It's not until you look at the consistent performers over numerous years where you start to see the coaches with respectable stats.

Bellamy 66%
Bennet 62%
Hasler 59%
Robinson 64%
Maguire 62%

I believe the better performing group (while obviously being decent coaches) also have something the lesser performing coaches don't have which certainly helps their stats. They have clubs that can attract TPA's, they have clubs who are prepared to be "creative" with regards the salary cap (I suspect Arthurs stats would have risen markedly if the Eels were more covert with their deceit), over recent times have all been clubs with real chances of winning premierships (what player doesn't want to play at a club like that and will often take under's to get that chance) and for the most part are "no nonsense" coaches who won't put up with mediocrity and won't be puppets to their respective boards.

Look what Bennett did when he came to us. He cleaned out the dead wood, stopped the jobs for the boys program, got the players he wanted, had every player believing in him and won us a premiership in his second year. He did it his way and didn't give 2 hoots about the power plays going on by a dis-functional board behind closed doors!

If we look from within Australia and to who is currently without a gig, Toovey with win stats of 58% is probably the best performer available. Not saying he's our man, but there have been a lot of names thrown around whose stats don't match his. What I will say however, is that we need an outsider who has no internal allegiances, is no one?s puppet and has pulling power with regards players and sponsors........unfortunately we had one, would only give him a 3 year deal when he wanted 5, won us a premiership, lost him along with some of our better talent, tried to get him back and f**kced that up, so our establishment decided the best thing to do was send us to purgatory for the subsequent 3 years.

Yes, we need a new coach, but it's waaaaaay more complicated than that. Anything short of a Bennett or Bellamy type character is unlikely to have a significant impact unless the core route of our problems gets A-holed along with Mary. Obviously Bennett and Bellamy are no chance, so if things don't change at the top of the tree, i can just see the next coach being another sacrificial lamb and a pawn in the establishments power plays and we will be on here writing the same old stuff next year and the year after that and..............

The coaches you are comparing percentages with have a lot more games in total than Mary ,his percentages will go down the more games in total that he has ,if he displays his current prowess.

 

[BennyV]

It is far easier to buy into the coach's ideologies when at the time he had 6 premiership rings to back up his ideas....There's only 2 other coaches in Australia with similar credentials (multiple premierships) Bellamy and Hasler.

It is also far easier to buy into the coaches ideologies when he bases them off the skillset at his disposal, and when the ideologies contribute to winning football games.