I remember people on this forum a couple of years back talking up Nafe Seluni and wanting Steve Kearney as coach.
Man I'll put my hand up for that one.
I wanted Kearney back in the day...but DAMN is he a dud.
The dude basically took everything he learnt from Bellamy...and threw it all out the window thinking his approach was better :crazy::crazy::crazy:
Look at McGuire...exact Bellamy approach and has done particularly well in his rookie year.
Kearney just didn't apply his learning and that was truly surprising.
Nafe I was on board with as well, but he still had a lot of defensive liabilities at the time. I bought the hype at the time having seen him play exceptionally well in NYC. That case taught me to temper expectations for NYC guys a little bit. I still belive Nafe had the talent, I just don't think mentally he took the next step to become successful.
With regards to the spine. I agree to an extent and all your points are pariticularly valid.
Moylan will be unproven and who knows what happens there. I believe in the kid...but we don't know how he'll go in NRL till he gets a shot. Coote has done well at #6, but how well does he go with a full year and everyone now having a sample size to target his deficiencies? Who knows. Walsh...well yeah. Kingston/Segeyaro - Two different types of players but I think compliment each other well.
I think the largest problem with our spine THIS year was the surrounding talent was awful. How many games this season did our forward pack get absolutely monstered? A lot. How many times did we spread the ball out to the centres for them not to be effective or for the passing to stop at five-eight or the backrower? A lot.
I think that changes with some of the recruits we've brought in. Whare is more than capable of playing effective at centre and distributing the ball to his winger. He is an excellent timing centre.
The biggest change I see next year is in the forward pack. You say we brought in 6 backrowers but I think that's where our issue was this year. We had absolutely zero impact until Matt Robinson came on later in the year. At that point in time we saw what impact a good hole running/offloading backrower can offer to our attack. Next year our backrowers will be Sika Manu & Lewis Brown - two guys who can hit a hole with aggression & offload. Off the bench we'll have Robinson and maybe Newton or other recruit to come on and play a similar role.
The amount of times I saw this year that our attack was going well on tackles 1 & 2 with Grant/McKendry/Weston gaining metres and then get absolute stunted on tackles 3 & 4 when the ball reached our backrowers was particularly frustrating. I think THAT is our biggest improvement next year.
However, I agree with all your reservations. I do think that our greater talent in the supporting cast will help the development and play of our spine but.
