What is ignorant is encouraging people to continue to blame Elliot. You seem rabid about this.
For the record the team is showing much more promise than it has for a few years. But I am sick of people blaming Elliot and trying to lead us to accept that a bottom third performance this year should not reflect badly on our leaders.
I'm not encouraging people to continue to blame Elliot. I am much harder on the management that hamstrung us than Elliot. I was just providing the evidence of what Cleary took over, which was a rabble. And it wasn't all Elliot's fault either, nor have I made an assertion that it was purely his fault,...as you rightly said it was the board that kept him despite management saying he should go. But that same management also negotiated terrible contracts that crippled our ability to do anything to improve the team...so essentially it is a group effort as to why we are in the position we are in today.
My Elliot comment today however, was about how people want to kick Cleary to the curb already, not you, but others and all I was saying was give him time...he took over a bad roster and bad culture and takes time to turn it around. What's done is done....but at least there are things in place for the future to fix that. Not blaming...just providing rationale.
And I agree with you that a bottom three performance isn't acceptable and not something I'd be happy with either - I had said already that 8th-11th is what I was expecting. But I'm also realistic in looking at our rosters in comparison to others and knowing that we are nowhere near the top 4-5 right now. I'm expecting mid-pack and if that happens a lot of people will be pissed, but I wont be calling for mass firings either - which I know is not what you are endorsing.
As for the plan, my post earlier in the other thread provides a skeleton of a team for 2014 that is essentially very different to two years ago when Gus took over. That essentially indicates the plan as a build up. Insert a few promising young players who are seasoned with reserve grade experience and we will be in a position to remain competitive for the long term.
Obviously the plan took a hit in that we missed Thurston which would have given us a key piece to our puzzle. But ultimately the building of the roster and the depth via juniors is in progress, that was the point I was trying to emphasize in the earlier post that when sitting back and looking at where we were...and where we are now and in 2014 in both a financial and team sense...is vastly different. The performances YTD haven't been great, but the skeleton to a very competitive and hopefully premiership winning team is here...now it is just the final pieces we need to put together.
