It was me. I have had a gutful of his passiveness. Whoever signed off on the Stone succeeding Bennett deal is an idiot because we basically painted ourself into a corner. When a club is desperate for money as we were, we had nowhere to go. Total beggars in the street We had one ticket telling us Tinkler was the devil when they themselves were just a bunch of Burro loving sycophants who were about to lose their only claim to fame in life.
The club has become a play thing. No other way to look at it. Why Tinkler doesn't rocket Bennett for the selection processes and the wasted money on recruits is astonishing. If it were Ambromanovich, Bennett would be out on his arse. As I have always maintained, we need an owner who is obssessed with winning. Instead he is a bank with a pulse. A pulse which is about to go into complete heart block if his debts get any worse. I really feel the frustration fellas. I know you do to. I am all out of answers. We are just a running joke.
I know it's a different sport, but in cricket, one of the reasons why Australia got out of the doldrums we were in during the '80s (where we only won one test series between 1984 and the '89 Ashes, which is described by many as the beginning of our rise from the dust) and became world champions after beating West Indies in 1995 was because of the brilliant Bob Simpson/Allan Border captain/coach partnership. They made winning an absolute MUST and not a SHOULD. From that they were able to create an environment conducive to winning which eventually culminated in us having a champion team rather than a team of champions. Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh took the development Allan Border and Simpson left over to the next level and made us a feared, dominating force at the highest level.
Now to the crux of your post (talking about RL now:lol
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I 100% agree with everything you said.
The biggest problem up until Tinkler came along in 2011 has been the Knights administration. Even after the SL-war where wages went up and nearly all players became full-time professionals, the administration still tried to run the club like it was still the semi-professional days of 1988. They never adapted with the times and we have been left behind the pack off the field, they squandered many financial opportunities to grow and expand our revenue pool (I know it's easier for me to see it now that I have my masters degree in finance), our junior development in the lower comps has been completely neglected whereas there was a large emphasis on it when I first started following the Knights in the mid-90s. Also on the financial front, our debt management has been appauling (especially after reading over their past financial reports dating back to 1998).
The list goes on and on, and most of these issues goes back to administrative failure. WHY? Because in Australian sport, or should I say definitely in RL, we have this fixation on believing that ex-players know how to do administrative/executive jobs well. In other words, when you have an "Old Boys Club" (which the Knights have been notorious for having for many years) and nepotism runs rife when this "jobs for the boys" motif is prevalent at board level, the big, tough decisions that need to be made for the betterment of the future of the club take a backseat. Consequences of that? We shot ourselves in the foot taking 2 steps backwards for any step forward we may've made in trying to grow our future.
As a consequence, we really struggled for so many years to attract anyone to Newcastle. Before Tinkler came along, only Ben Kennedy has been the only outstanding signing that I can remember since I started following the Knights in the mid '90s. The rest have either been average or dead wood.
I remember going to the Knights fan day (which was held at night) in 2001 and my dad and I got to walk all over the ground. Man oh man, when we walked into the dressing rooms and press box, our facilities were absolutely crap. Even stadiums in 3rd world countries have better facilities than that. Heck, even Collingwood in the AFL, their facilities made us look like we were an amateur side based in Ethiopia. Problems with adequate training facilities have been a large cause of the constant injury crises we have had for more than a decade. It's quite amazing that champion players like Joey had to put up with such shanty house training conditions for many years.
And funny you mentioned about Rick Stone, who achieved better results and showed far more potential during his extremely short stint in first grade coaching than "Supercoach" Bennett has shown so far at the Knights. He also had the Knights playing a far more expansive, exciting brand of football than what we have dished up over the past 1.5 years, where we've been playing more like the St George Knights (instead a much crappier version that didn't make the finals last year and will struggle to do so this year). I believe that Bennett's time at the Knights is going to severely damage his coaching career and reputation as someone who, although I give him credit for winning at the Dragons with less talent than what Nathan Brown had (although the Dragons were already a team on the cusp of winning the big one and just needed some leadership from the top, and not one of the boys like Brownie, to instill that belief in them), was only able to be a dominant coach when he was able to put up State of Origin-quality sides week in week out at the Broncos - who pretty much were the QLD state of origin side and had most of the players in the Australian side. Not only that, given Bennett is on $1.5 million/year, the Knights could've saved at least half the amount of money, even more if they still had Stone.
And finally, regarding Tinkler, Tinkler is a punter and not an investor. That's how he made his millions. But, not only creating wealth but SUSTAINING the wealth is the true characteristic of an investor and Tinkler's poor money management and extravagant spending is going to come back and bite him in the arse soon in a very big way. He'll be lucky to see out his 10yr commitment to the Knights at the rate his parlous financial state is going. You've got to remember that his investment and companies are very highly leveraged, meaning that he uses a lot of debt to cover equity and that only works when the economy is good. It's going to hurt him now the economy is crap. But as a leader, I agree with you hence why I said that besides reading about him in the papers of whatever Tom, Dick or Harry is trying to sue him for unpaid debt etc, I have not heard anything about Tinkler in relation to the Knights since Bennett started at the beginning of last year. Haven't heard anything about whether or not he is happy or angry or sad about how the Knights are going, or about any recruitment decisions etc. And to me, that is a real lack of leadership on Tinkler's behalf. You're correct about those owners in the EPL or American sports. They'd be absolutely filthy and all over the situation if the Knights were playing in one of those comps.
