At a shit club, you need a teacher, mentor and tactician to bring the best out of the mediocrity that is in your roster.
Maguire is none of these things. He is a very simple, train hard, run hard and tackle hard kind of guy. Works when you have quality, but burns out the mediocre.
Our coach is very similar type to Maguire, but for one thing, he is more likeable and has the ability to recruit well. He brought cheap hard workers to the club when we were struggling and young relatively unknowns like Gutho and even landed superstars like Foran regardless of how it turned out. He had/has the personality and credibility to attract players.
Maguire doesn't. His personality eventually took its toll on the Bunnies. He couldn't replenish the roster even though it was still decent and it was on the slide so he was ousted. None of the players that he coached or coaches show the same kind of respect or love for the guy as say our players do for BA. In fact some have even said they don't like his style of coaching and they just don't get it. On its own that would mean nothing, but when you look back on his career and current situation, it adds to the negatives and the doco hasn't helped his cause at all.
All in all I think he is a one dimensional character coach which I don't think makes for a very good coach. He is the type that can succeed when you give him a quality roster that has enough self motivated quality players to make it a success and that is about it.
Having Sheens there is going to eventually make all the difference to that club and if they give him the resources and staff, he will get them back to being a very strong club from the ground up. But it will take a few years to see the fruits of his labour. Boy do I wish we had moved and signed Sheen as our development/football manager. I think he and Gould are the two best in the business for that type of thing. Well maybe if they dick him around in a year or two he might get the shits enough and be ripe for the picking. We really do need someone of this type of elite quality to get in there and restructure our whole under NRL level systems. I really don't like watching such high quality players like Josh Schuster and Haumole Olakau'atu playing for Manly. Those sorts of players were a standout from a very young age and should never have been missed, ignored or not been a priority to keep in our juniors districts.
We have to many players come from our nursery who never play for us, but go on to play for other clubs, win premierships and achieve representative honours. This I want to see stop to the point that if we lose them, they should have played for us at least for 3-4 years at NRL level. This "can't keep them all" bullshit line that so many of you trot out is just that.
The Roosters know how to spot quality at a very early age. Most of their stars come to their club at around 16 years old. Besides Schuster for example was the best player in his district at 14-15 years of age. We should have been all over him and if our systems and setup was where it should be, we would have been and the kid/s and parents would know that and never want to leave and play for our rivals. Who wants to go and play for an area that isn't your own if you are being looked after and you have pride and love for where you come from, your mates and your roots?
If we set it up right, the best talent would never want to leave, knowing that they will come through a stellar program system that will improve and hone their game and look after them all the way up through the grades to NRL level if they work hard and make it. It should be every kids ambition to make it with the Eels not their/our rivals ffs! We should have a finger on the pulse of all the best talent and make sure that they know we are there for them and not allow other scouts get in their ear and turn them before we have the chance. That can only happen if the player/parents feel that we aren't in the picture for whatever reason. Like I said, no kid or parent would send their kid to the other side of town to train and play in the hope of making it 5-8 years later, when if we showed the same interest they could do the same in their own backyard.
That can only happen if we have dropped the ball, which we obviously have on numerous occasions. Someone like Sheens or Gould would fix that from happening in my opinion. Also someone on here mentioned a while back that Penrith poached our best man that looked after our junior setup and the guy in charge now sucks. I can't remember who said it or the guys name that was poached, but whoever it was, we should look to getting him back before the guy doing the job now totally F's things up, if he hasn't already. I'm sick of politics and mediocrity. Please, please, please club, fix everything from the ground up once and for all. It will shock everyone how great we could become, especially mediocrity dwellers like Pou. Not a powerhouse.......THE POWERHOUSE!
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