As manager of our football department, he bears responsibility for our recruitment and retention which I'm sure most of us will agree has been very poor since our premiership. He himself admits he had no succession plan following our GF win, and it shows. I get the impression he's made a number of bad decisions in terms of what players are on (e.g. Dane Nielson was apparrently on $200K) which has left our cap unbalanced, and I've been told by a player manager that he's very difficult to deal with, which makes the job of attracting talent to the club harder than it should be. I also think he tries to do much in terms of talent identification which I don't think is his strong suit.
The guy obviously has a lot of experience, and has had premiership success at a couple of clubs, but I just think he's past his use-by date.
He hasn’t been there the whole time since our premiership, we know that the ship fell apart when John Lee came aboard, we know that when Richo came back from the NRL he faced a mess. I think it prudent that he then realised that we needed a system where if anyone left the organisation then another person could seamlessly step in & take up the reins, i for one am glad that through a bit of adversity Richo was able to recognise this, it means in theory we shouldn’t have to face it again to such an extent
What players are on? None of us know what players are on & rightly so, that’s a private matter between employee & employer
You’ve been told eh? Well f**k me, if that’s the case I’m glad he’s on the ball & difficult to deal with, I’m sure the many hundreds of players he’s dealt with would have mixed reactions, some happy some not so happy, that’s the way it is
Anybody who thinks he’s the sole arbiter when it comes to talent identification is seriously delusional, this is obviously a part of his job description but his longevity in this game means he’s no dill & he obviously involves the footy experts like the coaching staff etc & the many contacts he has nation wide, he just gets the deal done
The only indication that someone that experienced is past his used by date is if they don’t care anymore, if they lose the passion & Richo clearly hasn’t, his goal is to steady the ship, ensure the succession plan is implemented & that we sustain success & then I’d assume that at some stage the ball gets passed to someone like Shannon Donatto
