All he's really said that's controversial is about Egan & tbh everyone seems to have a different opinion on how good Egan is or can be. Everything else is sadly spot on.
The absolute stupidity of the club to fire a coach for under performing with a squad apparently good enough to win a comp, only to hire a coach that doesn't think the squad is anywhere good enough & totally rebuilds it anyway. It's just mind boggling.
I know I've said this before but surely the first question to a coach should of been - do you think you can take this squad (with minor adjustments) to a premiership?
I infact prefer Ivan Cleary over Hook,
Yes we generally sucked this year, but if you remember last year(the whole year)
We gave away starts, only to finish strong, and maybe win the game, ONLY when the opposition got tired, we were way too reliant in hail mary plays, and only efforts in clutch moments, INSTEAD of actually training the team to work as a unit in proper defence, what Ivan did at wests tigers last year, was grind most of the top teams out of the game for whole 80mins, mind you he didn't have the cattle to take them to the finals, but now the tigers have a core roster of good players, plus benji magic.
Our side was never going to threaten the comp this year, not if we played the same get out of jail cards this year, it has the built off defence, which honestly we weren't good at, im not saying we are good at it now either, but we have to be next year, whilst converting all the missed opportunities we've constantly bombed this season.
Quite honestly Our backs were atrocious, im not surprised Waqa and DWZ were let go, its best that we started fresh with a young squad, and build a team from scratch, not hope on the brilliance of deadwood from hooks lack of coaching/guidance.
I would hope trent barrett will impove our attack next season, but our defence is our real issue, we need nigel plum type performances from the whole team.
The other issue is all the media hype on how we failed this year, under ivan. when you got guys like paul green, and paul mcgregor with a top 8 roster, underperforming tremendously,
Des hasler, Wayne Bennett, and Michael Mcguire, basically walking into their new club rosters full of stars,
Dean pay getting it together, but only now after he has had over a year to galvanize the dogs squad, but ivan has only had this very year to get us humming, media must be off its head to think we were top4 from the start of season off the back of our defence last year