My personal opinion is that Price has the ability to coach. He has spent some time in the lower grades with some success, he was assistant to Bennett who recommended him for the position, and by all accounts the players like him and the board are supporting him. All positives.
I also believe Price has been limited by his roster over the last couple of years. A few reasons for that are:
- Older squad wanting to move on - we have off loaded and lost alot of players over the past 2 years. A fair amount of upheaval which would make it difficult for any coach
- A game plan involving attack - we saw the fallout from this through the Soward situation. I don't know the facts but I would assume Prices game plan involved taking the ball to the line and creating opportunities through the halves (which I believe we are starting to see now). Many players coming through from the Bennett period were of the defensive state of mind and turning that around would have been a massive effort
- Limited depth in key positions - the halves were the big fail in this area. Price persisted with Fein and whoever else because we had nothing else. Based on the actions of the club it would appear Drinkwater had disciplinary issues and Seijka injured himself in his first game in the Cutters. All other valid options were already in first grade. I think he did the best he could with what he had to work with.
- Subdued recruitment - when we had the opportunity to recruit well we didn't or were too late. And by all accounts it seems Price was left out of this process. Not something you can blame him for.
Having said all that, I think we still have a long way to go. All I wanted to see in the opening rounds was some improvement. And we are definitely seeing that.
At this early stage based on the games so far, I don't expect us to win the comp or even beat the top teams. But given we have a relatively 'easy' first 4 games (ie not playing any teams that are expected to be in the top 8), we should at least be able to use these games to work on key areas of our game and start to get some of those combos gelling. And again, we saw that on the weekend with our defense. Although the warriors were not on their game, we saw that we could actually combine good defense with good attack and come out on top.
To add to that we have some players to come back (Stockwell, de Belin, Dugan, Witt etc) which only improves our outlook.
For me it is too early to get all excited. Price still needs to prove himself and the team still needs work, but at this stage the signs are positive for the future - if not this year then next year I see a team to be reckoned with. Lets hope we can keep these confidence levels high and keep improving over the next few weeks.
