Estoboy said:
thats us!
and it only took 13 months to get here!
If this WAS Man U, heads would be rolling from the CEO down.
At least our defence is pretty damn good!
-16 is fantastic for four straight
To be fair to Noyce, I think the administrative areas he was referring to, such as having the highest crowd average in Sydney, increasing sponsorship revenue and having the best merchandise sales in Sydney, have remained strong since the grand final. Not Man U strong, but in a crowded Sydney market with a poor performing team, strong none the less.
On the field I think it was just assumed that if the club kept Marshall, Farah, Fulton, Gibbs, Halatau, Harrison, Collis, etc together then they'd remain successful on the field. Unfortunately, Prince left unexpectedly, Marshall and Fulton missed almost all of 2006, while Gibbs, Halatau and Farah played much of last year with injuries and some.
Granted there have been mistakes of planning since that time and maybe more could have been done to prevent off field incidents, but there have been a lot of unforeseen problems as well that you can't really blame Noyce for.