This is a once in a generation opportunity for the Club to decide what it stands for and not accept this level of mediocrity in terms of the integrity of the playing group. The standard you walk by is the standard you accept. Now is the time to make some serious decisions that may result in short term pain but which can get us back on track.
The most important thing that needs to happen is they need to put aside their petty politics at the board level and do whatever it takes to John Howard on the board. The guy is a tragic Dragons fan and his contacts in corporate and government would be helping us immensely and immediately. The club needs to step into the modern age and it needs to genuinely attract the big end of town to get us money. The Roosters have snuck up on us and they are going to surpass in premierships if we don't get serious. I don't like the man but he would be good for the club.
The board needs to decide if Hook is the coach for the future. If he is we should extend his contract by another two years. He can't instil a new winning culture if he only has one year to go on his contract as that will leave him making short term decisions not long term decisions. However, if he is part of the problem then he goes too. This is a hard and tough decision, guess what that's what being a board member is about you have to make hard decisions, stop eating at Dragon's functions and start paying attention to imminent collapse about to happen on your watch.
Vaughan and Corey Norman should have their contract cut immediately and told to find another club. Someone has to pay the price for this debacle and these two idiots are the sacrificial lambs the playing group needs to see to understand there are consequences.
Jack DeBellin should be brought before the board to justify why he should keep playing for the club and if he chooses to stay he should accept the addition of very stringent off field behavioural clauses in his contract. Plus he should agree to spend his off season in Aboriginal communities with Ricky Walford to learn a bit of humility and to appreciate how lucky he is. If that's too hard for him after the club stuck by him for all this time and extended his contract then he can go and play for the Sharks or Warriors as he isn't the someone who faces up to his mistakes and learns from them.
The remaining players should all be offered the choice to leave immediately or alternatively own their bad behaviour as a group and agree as a group to work harder as a group off the field to enhance on field performance.
The club needs to appoint a full time sports psychology team to work with the team and figure out what is going on within the player group and find a way to get them to stop being a bunch of nobs who don't put in the extra 5%. This is not about molly coddling them, this about working out why they individually and collectively take short cuts and start giving Hook modern tools assist him in building a winning culture.
Whatever it costs, the team needs to sign Brett Morris and Jason Nightingale to the off field staff to bring back some of the training ethos and helping out your mates ethos they were part of in the all too brief Bennett era. Maybe also Matt Cooper?
Ideally, tough old school players who always gave 100% on the field like Graham Wynn, Mark Coyne and Rodd Reddy should be brought to off season training in January 2022 to infuse a bit of the team culture and the players can learn from true legends.
The club needs to develop a 5 year plan and a 10 year plan
The 5 year plan needs to be structured around player culture and what the club is going to do to instil a lasting culture of excellence and working for your team mates that is not dependent on head coaches who come and go.
The 10 year plan needs to be about the clubs infrastructure. We need to access money from the big end of town through John Howard to build us up as the club that is the best. The best facilities, the best governance, the best gym, the best sports scientists, access to business networks post career, third party deals etc We need to create an infrastructure that makes players want to play with us because they get the best of everything.
