Really? What about his dubious under-use of the bench (one player for 10minutes) that may have cost us at the back end of tight games?
I doubt it cost us in those games. We didn't lose because we were tired, we lost because we couldn't match teams for speed on the edges. Even when teams kicked 85th minute field goals against us we still had half the team trying to charge it down.
Those 10 minute stints were usually to give a young player some game time, in a match where it wasn't really an appropriate time.
Example - Pat O'Hanlon was mostly to blame for our loss to the Broncos at home. He shouldn't have been on the field in that situation if he didn't know he had to work hard to help his outside defender (Casey McGuire). Kearney's fault? Absolutely. But it wasn't his use of the interchange; it was his confidence in a young player who was untested in a tight NRL-level contest.
Anyway, he might have cost us that game but he'll be better for the experience, and who knows how many games Pat O'Hanlon will win us in the future? It's great that Kearney is willing to take a risk on a young player, and as we know, sometimes risks don't pay off.
Remember, just because a player is fresh doesn't mean he'll do a better job than a superior player who has played the whole game. Even at Origin level players have played 10 minutes or less. I'd say if a player gets less than 20 minutes he was probably only there in case of emergency. And Kearney's not the only coach who does that. The Tigers halves and hooker all play 80 minutes so Sheens carries an extra outside back on the bench.
There's no rule saying you have to follow the vanilla setup of 1 x 40 minute hooker, 2 x 40 minute props and 1 x 40-60 minute back-rower on your bench. There are plenty of situations where you don't need to structure your bench that way, including if you have less than 17 NRL standard players available on match day. Like what happened to us this year.
