When Paul Green first stepped into Cowboys HQ, he was exactly what we needed.
We had all the attacking instincts, but he gave us structures, so we had a combination of both. He also gave us structures in defence (albeit he copied Trent Robinson including deliberate penalties near the try line to slow down the game). He made players accountable and got rid of all the conspiracy theories and whinging about hands of foran and 7 tackle tries. He gave our playmakers a calmness in the big moments with some pointers on game management etc.
Moving on to now, we seem too far removed from any of the attack we had before Green. And further, he seems to be too proud to make necessary changes to a style of footy past its used by date. I know we are a small country team extremely happy about a 2015 premiership, but if you keep rewarding people for yesterday's achievements, we will never win again.
As we know, we were lucky to make the finals in 2017 due to results going our way in the last round, but we were also playing an evolved style of footy because injuries forced Green's hands. He had to move away from the stale 2014-2016 style. The following year (2018), Scott and Thurston are back (albeit not the former versions of themselves) and Green rushes to revert things back to the old style again. As the results get worse and worse, Green stubbornly sticks to the same style until about the last few games when he reluctanty bloods some younger players. Thurston took all the blame for 2018 because he just looked so old and past it, but that really let Paul Green off the hook for not trying to be imaginative. What excuse will Green now have in 2019? Still Thurston......?
My biggest fears for this club (besides Paul Green's stubbornness to only change when there are injuries) is that we are now too far removed from the Murray-Henry attacking DNA, and are only the Green robotic style.
We just rely on three big name forwards to make ridiculous metres for our halves to play off. We have very little speed in the backline because our quicker players are rotting in reserve grade. I think we really need changes, and the onus is on Green to do it while he is coach. Paul Green will badly get exposed if Taumalolo is out for an extended period.