I think you can break the 17 teams up into roughly four groups of 4 or 5.
There is the top 4, these teams are all super strong, consistent and have a really solid coach
There is the second 4 which are the strong but inconsistent team
There is the third 5 which are the average teams that have moments of brilliance
There is the bottom 4 which are consistently bad
Where abouts you finish within these groupings is often a result of injuries and bad refereeing but your allocation to a grouping is a combination of coaching talent, player quality and team ethic.
In 2023 we were bottom 4, consistently bad. However, my perspective was that we were consistently bad because we didn't play for the whole 80 minutes, we didn't have a team that wanted to play for each other and we had a coach who was unable to change his tactics and methods to try and resolve shortcomings. A big factor in this was there was clearly a divide between the players who liked Hook and those who did not.
I think with Flanno we have a strong modern coach who can work to address and improve team spirit. Ultimately 2024 needs to be about establishing a strong modern coaching methodology that builds a cohesive team with discipline and ethos of hard work.
If Flanno is able to address the division in the playing group and get them to pull together, play for 80 minutes and play with some cohesive spirit, then I think we will be in the third 5 and without injury we will be knocking on the 8 but ultimately falling short, because we do not have the cattle for a long season and we will fall short by about 2 wins, which will happen just after origin as Hunt starts negotiating to leave and the playing group loses a little bit of spirit.
If the Dogs have shown anything just buying lots of players does nothing to help team spirit or harmony, Flanno is better to focus on getting players with some guts and starch in defence who are happy to work hard for their salaries.
I think if we got a couple of star players, unless it was a superstar like Cleary or Tedesco, it might actually be a bad thing and would paper over the cracks as they could lift us into the second 4 on the backs of their performances but we would not have fundamentally fixed our team. Our focus for 2024 needs to be on the basics, team spirit/cohesion and identifying young talent. That creates a sustainable foundation for building a future.
In 2025 we appoint Cooper to the coaching staff, Dean Young has worked with our forwards to establish a strong defence with forwards who are not afraid to work and Flanno will have established a strong team culture. From that foundation post origin 2025 we can hopefully attract some spine players to flesh out our attack and a superstar forward who will be attracted by a team that will pull together and which provides a solid foundation for them to star in combined with the beach lifestyle in Wollongong.
