The mediocre roster and sustained success aspects were intended with mutual exclusivity. Probably should have used 'or' instead.
Hasler is one to get great results from a mediocre roster - his Dogs team of 2014 was abysmal for a GF team and TBH winning a minor premiership in 2012 was a great feat. Man for man our 2018 team stacks up pretty well to Maguire's premiership winning Souths team. Cleary is the brutally obvious one - his proven ability to rebuild a struggling roster and take it deep into the semis is something Mary could dream of. Brownie is another - again, building awesome results from the ground up in both NRL with us and in Super League. Even Toovey, of whom I'm not a great fan, kept a dysfunctional roster successful in a work environment worse than our club. Then we move to other 'more accomplished' rookie coaches who've dealt with changing lower grades rosters and actually gained success; guys like Brennan, Demetriou and Green.
And then we can look at Super League, where guys like Tony Smith, Shane Wane and the aforementioned Nathan Brown have proven success, some of those taking poorly previously performing teams to the big one. And yes, ESL results have shown to be reflected in NRL (a la Robinson and Maguire winning NRL premierships after success in ESL).
So, to my original point - there were far more accomplished coaches that should have been actively pursued before settling on a guy because he bleeds red and white.
Hasler I used to rate highly, but seeing how he left the Dogs, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near our club, given we’ve just fixed our cap.
Maguire got sacked as he had reportedly lost the playing group, just need to look at them now under a different coach to work out perhaps he might have had some pretty glaring weaknesses.
Cleary as I’ve said previously I agree with.
Maybe Brown yes, but 3 spoons isn’t a great look.
Toovey got lucky for a couple of years as they still had most of the 2011 premiership guys. He got sacked too just like Hasler and Maguire, so no I wouldn’t necessarily rate him above Mary.
As for the rookies and the ESL guys, we’ll we’ll never know as none have had a full season in NRL.
So really other than Cleary, there is no head and shoulders candidate that’s really that much better than Mary. And no one really fits your criteria of sustained sucesss, with/or mediocre rosters, not at NRL level anyway.
