F.O Andrew Webster

[Penrose Warrior]

Thinking today, the two big stories of our season :

1- bad luck with injuries
2- Webster just not being as good as we thought he was.

and tbh, that isn’t his fault. We got carried away.

He still is a good coach and we are fortunate to have him, especially given our record with coaches.

100% agree with this.

In terms of the game plan, I can't necessarily fault him for that. It worked last year, but other teams wised up to it. Maybe he was too slow to adapt? In hindsight (and I will 100% admit I got this wrong, too) playing SJ with injury was an issue. We probably lost a couple of games we could have won with SJ on one leg - it is crazy to listen to his Play On podcast and hear he couldn't walk down the stairs properly with this Achilles, and as we know didn't train. That's not a guy you should be picking, really.

I think AFB affected the side at times, more than we'll probably ever appreciate. I think some of us saw that coming, and maybe he's been OK at times, but I've got to believe he's been divisive at times - obviously the main part when he refused to join the team in the song.

100% he is still a good coach, it's a boring old message but the greats - Bennett, Gibson, Cleary, to a lesser extend Bellamy - took a long time to win their first. I'm not saying Webster is them, but I'm sure given the quality of Webby, he'll tell you this has been a massive learning experience in his second year that will bode well going forward.

And yeah, the injuries have been shocking, really. I don't follow 17 clubs' medical list but I imagine ours would be the worst, in terms of games missed/status of those guys who have missed.