Well you don't have to answer.
But it doesn't exactly lend any weight to your point of view if you can't answer a simple question, does it? I was genuinely interested in a discussion, but you seem more interested in dismissing other opinions.
How about a story instead? A bit of a demonstration.
When I was young and first came into grade cricket, well before I realised I was just an average cricketer and started angling for rig-based selection, I struggled against inswing. Basically looking back it was a function of not really having an awareness of where my off stump was, so if a guy started to swing the ball back at me I would play a half-hearted poke and either get bowled/lbw or nick off.
At the club, we had an ex-Sydney first grader, left arm fast bowler who swung the ball back at right handers pretty much at will. This guy has a career bowling average of f**king 9 in Canberra. My skipper got him to bowl at me every single training session. He got me out at will and gave me a fair few bruises to boot.
We never really said much, apart from the typical aggro fast bowler sledging. Good guy, I mean, but he was competitive and he definitely trained how he played. What he would do was sledge the shit out of me when he got me out, which was often. He’d hoop one back into the stumps or find both edges of the bat probably two out of every ten balls. The he’d come down the pitch and sledge me for playing that way.
He was more of a tormentor than a mentor, but I learned more from facing him than anyone else. Because he was so good compared to me, he could just hammer away at my weakness, and I had to learn how to defend that. Not only that, but wrapped up in his sledging were bits of advice. “That’s a f**king dumb shot, why do you wanna hit every single ball” when you get out nicking a short length ball….well really, strip that back and it’s actually saying “leave that shit alone.”
I learned from him, but he was never a mentor.
Now, it’s a different sport, and obviously not the elite level, but you don’t reckon Mahoney is going to have an opposed session against Issac Luke and learn from him in the same way? You don’t reckon he’ll watch Luke draw defenders in, or how he chooses when to run, or how quickly he gets the ball to the halves, or whatever, and learn from that? You don't think playing and training alongside him will teach Mahoney or Schneider a single thing? It's an established concept; young players learn from the more experienced ones. Mahoney could definitely stand to learn to stop throwing forward passes. He has the wrong name to be able to get away with it, for starters.
You do not have to be a mentor for younger players to benefit and learn from your experience. We have a need at hooker, which is our weakest position, and Issac Luke is a good player with a wealth of experience. Do you seriously think Reed Mahoney would learn nothing from him? It isn't enough to sign him just for that, but he is definitely far better than what we have and his experience is a bonus.
So again, I'll ask you for the sake of discussion. Why do you seem to believe that a player must be a mentor to teach someone something? And what metric do you use to establish that our older players have not taught the younger ones anything? Because that's hard to quantify, as I said earlier, so I'd like to learn from you if you have a way of doing it that I've missed.
Or can you, perhaps, acknowledge that you made a sweeping statement without actually considering what it might be missing? There's nothing wrong with realising there might be more to the story than you originally considered and there is nothing wrong with discussing your point of view.
