On Coaching Success...

[The Colonel]

They still had Dymock and Smith on the field so it was touch and go - in hindsight it wasn't good - however Carige should never have been on the field in the first place.

Same could be said for 2001 when he left Taylor on for to long before bringing PJ on. However we will never know what would have happened if he had done so sooner.

 

[Misty Bee]

How does a coach make a difference to a scoreline with 11 minutes to go. I am pretty sure he didn't go and tell Cariage to kick the ball back to them at half-time. Agreed having Cariage on the field wasn't the best thing however once a game is that far into the clock a coach has SFA to do with the fact they lost it unless he was on the field. He cannot change the mindset of a team aside from sending messages and changing players.....

Please Misty argue with me better than that! ;-)

Well, Colonel, I suggest you revisit your argument.

The succesful coaches in John Lang and Wayne Bennett coach the players so they can take advantage of the oppurtunities to win those games

The opportunity was being upby 18 with 11 minutes to go. parra didn't take it. Therefore, under your terms, the coach failed to coach them to take that opportunity.

 

[The Colonel]

The opportunity was being up by 18 with 11 minutes to go. parra didn't take it. Therefore, under your terms, the coach failed to coach them to take that opportunity.

The opportunity was the game itself.

He cannot coach them to be infallible, never have rushes of blood and do stupid things and drop their bundle 11 minutes out. No coach can do that. The whole point of the article is the coach doesn't coach to win but to create chances. The game itself was the opportunity to go into the Grand Final. Smith gave them the chance by coaching them through the year to that very game. He didn't instruct Carige to kick the ball back to the opposition. He didn't miss the tackles.

 

[Eelementary]

I used to be naive, like all you "Smith is a great coach"-sayers. But I have opened my eyes to the reality - PARRAMATTA WILL NOT WIN A PREMIERSHIP UNDER HIM. It is as simple as that.

OK, he has some great coaching qualities - he is a great guy; he pulled us out of this rut this season and almost took us to the finals; he makes some great recruiting choices.

But he also has his flaws - he makes some awful recruiting decisions (WHY did he re-sign Prince, sign McKinnon AND keep Graham? 3 fullbacks? WTF?); he CANNOT make the tough decisions (had he cut Freshy earlier, we might have seen him peak earlier; he should have cut Wags, Vella, Hodgo, Green and others not performing much earlier than he did); he doesn't seem able to make good decisions in crunch matches (it turned out to be a good decision in the end, but WHY on Earth did he tell Dykes and Witt to go for field goals against Brissie? We had them on the ropes - they were tired, we were all over them and we needed to beat them by more)(another example: against CAnberra in CAnberra he keeps Prince and Tonga on the right who got SLAUGHTERED in defence, and doesn't make ONE change; he could have put ZPrince at fullback, moved Ash to the wing and taken off Tonga and put Widders there or SOMETHING but he didn't!).

Whether you like it or not, the coach's and players' jobs are to win matches and Premierships. We won the Minor Premiership in 2001 and came within a cat's whisker of winning. But we did NOT win. Since then, we have struggled.

As long as he coaches the Blue and Gold, I'll be behind him. But I have reason to believe he is NOT the answer to our Premiership drought, or even our lack of competitiveness.

 

[Eelementary]

OK.

May I suggest something? Of course I may, it is a message board.

The people who love BS (which is 100% fine by me) always tell the people not impressed by him (like Misty) to give reasons.

How about we do it the OTHER way around? How many Premierships has he won? What qualities and example illustrate the fact he is a good coach?

In my previous post, I illustrated cases which to me suggest he doesn't have what it takes. So what DOES he have?

 

[The Colonel]

I have never said that Smith is great nor infallible.

I have never said that he will definitely end our premiership drought.

I do question his recruitment policies and for that matter Noel Cleal's. Sure Cleal brought some good players to the club but for every Lyon we have had a Boyd, a Tim Ryan and a Barney Haslett. Smith nor Cleal have been infallible (cool word don't you think ...... the Colonel's word of the day is INFALLIBLE) however as Smith is the head coach and generally has the final say on who goes and stays it finishes with him.

I don't however agree to the fact that Smith is the main reason for the clubs problems.

I have stated before that Smith can create champion teams. He has never ever coached a team with a champion. Sure Hindy is one of the best second rowers running around but I am talking Sterling, Johns, Fittler or Daley. Throw Johns in the Parramatta side of 2001 and we win no doubt about it.

I think Smith is so intent on creating something from players that others have passed by is his biggest downfall. He sees the limits of peoples abilities but doesn't explore further than those abilities he wants. Hence, the reason we have seen players like Schifcofske, Marsh and Hindmarsh go to other clubs while we have signed players with another skill that they may not have had.

In Thorman and Witt I believe that given time Smith may have the champion halves he has been craving. However, unless Smith is able to perform well next year - ie a top four position. I doubt he will have the oppurtunity to work with them.

 

[Eelectrica]

(it turned out to be a good decision in the end, but WHY on Earth did he tell Dykes and Witt to go for field goals against Brissie? We had them on the ropes - they were tired,

That's the whole thing. Smith DIDN'T tell them to go for field goal. The players took it upon themselves.
The coach isn't sitting in the grandstand with a video game controller controlling every tiny thing his players do on the field.

Take two critical plays from last Sundays Grand Final from what I'd imagine the coaches perspective would have been.
Play 1: Sattlers tackle on todd Byrne.
John Lang:"Go Scotty, get there, get there, don't give up you can do it. Alriiight, great play Scotty, and knocked him over the sideline as well."

Play 2: Craig Wing's inside pass to Chris Walker that bombed what would have been a certain try and possibily won the game for the Roosters.
Ricky: "Great play guys, keep it going, just get the ball out wide and we'll stroll in. GOD DAMN IT! Why the hell would he have passed it inside. All he had to was keep it going. DAMN!"
Two match turning plays completely outside of a coaches control all the coach can do is hope the players make the right decision.

 

[eloquentEEL]

I wouldn't classify myself as a Smith lover, but I do believe he is the best current candidate for the job. Of course he has bad points, but seeing as though the question's been asked, in terms of what makes him a good coach:

- he doesn't take any crap from the players and instills discipline;

- he managed to take a team with only a few well-known players (no superstars) and turned them into a champion team (very similar to what Lang did with the Panthers this year, but unfortunately the Eels fell at the final hurdle);

- he innovates every now and then:
- I believe it was Smith who introduced the tactic of running at one player to tire them out and make them ineffective in defense (when he had the Saints running at Lamb);
- Smith introduced the whole finger pointing defensive technique where the players in defense point out who they are marking - I'm sure I've seen non-Eels do it in SOO matches since it was introduced so effectively by Smith;

- when he's got a relatively healthy squad he knows how to use rotation to effectively keep players fresh and develop a number of combinations which may be required if there is injury down the track;

- he's intelligent enough to have taken a man off in the semi against NZ in 2001. what this did is give the team a practice run at working out what they would do if they found themselves down to twelve men in one of their next matches. what other coach have you seen doing something like that?

 

[Misty Bee]

I wouldn't classify myself as a Smith lover, but I do believe he is the best current candidate for the job. Of course he has bad points, but seeing as though the question's been asked, in terms of what makes him a good coach:

- he doesn't take any crap from the players and instills discipline;

- he managed to take a team with only a few well-known players (no superstars) and turned them into a champion team (very similar to what Lang did with the Panthers this year, but unfortunately the Eels fell at the final hurdle);

- he innovates every now and then:
- I believe it was Smith who introduced the tactic of running at one player to tire them out and make them ineffective in defense (when he had the Saints running at Lamb);
- Smith introduced the whole finger pointing defensive technique where the players in defense point out who they are marking - I'm sure I've seen non-Eels do it in SOO matches since it was introduced so effectively by Smith;

- when he's got a relatively healthy squad he knows how to use rotation to effectively keep players fresh and develop a number of combinations which may be required if there is injury down the track;

- he's intelligent enough to have taken a man off in the semi against NZ in 2001. what this did is give the team a practice run at working out what they would do if they found themselves down to twelve men in one of their next matches. what other coach have you seen doing something like that?

If Smith IS the best current candidate, that means that there was no way we would ever have made the finals last season!

Think about that for a sec. That means that Parramatta have fallen from an almost untouchable minor premier to a strugler who can't keep topsides fromscoring less than 30-40 points in big gamse.

So, if Parra has slumped that far, who is to blame? Injuries? Or Brian Smith?

Go back to the Cariage incident. The comment was made that Smith can't coach a player not to do that. I say that's crap. commentators, like Sterlo, always comment when a player in a rep game makes a basic mistake that 'that wouldn't have happened at this level of football'. Cariage's actions were certainly in that category. I can also recall (sorry to bring Yawnion into the conversation) the lasw WRC, and a comment made by (from memory) Buddha re the scrummaging successes of the Wallabies pack. The comment: "They practiced and practiced untill they got it spot on. Then they practiced and practiced some more until the couldn't get it wrong

Successful teams don't get it wrong.

Brain Smiths teams often do.

As for the 12man in the semi, you are right in assuming that no other coach would do that. At the time, I saw it as either a coach making sure his charges had experience in every situation, and also an extremely cocky coach. In hindsight, that decision was a very strange one. It smacks of a coach that does not trust his players to respond to unknown situations. That they had to rehearse it suggests that they didn't have the confience, or the coaches confidence, to work it out if that situation happened. Especially, being a stickler for coaching clean teams, the chance of a Parra player being sin binned in a grand final was very very slim.

 

[Y2Eel]

Maybe with the 12 man situation they were practicing it in a real game?? like you said they may have practiced at training a whole heap but smith thought they could practice some more so they wouldnt get it wrong...

 

[Misty Bee]

Sp where's the spontenaiety in that?

 

[Twizzle]

Sp where's the spontenaiety in that?

How do you coach spontenaity?

That comes from a player's natural ability, a la Sterlo, Freddie, Joey ect..

Even the Almighty Jack cannot coach spontenaiety.

(I think we need a spell checker Misty, I'm not to sure about spontenaiety)