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Why should nine years make any difference? A coach can't make the club go any faster than its top speed. Ricky Stuart and Trent Robinson both won premierships in their first year at the Chooks. Hagan won in his first year at Newcastle, and Paul Green won in his second year at the Cowboys. Until we get fundamentally stronger as a club (i.e. more willing/able to spend money on the football department) this is as good as we get - pushing for top four and needing a bit of luck to win against equally matched (50% chance) teams in the finals and a lot of luck to beat better teams. This idea that a coach is going to get you a better squad is bullshit. That's the responsibility of recruitment/retention staff.
I think our recruitment and retention has been pretty damn good the last few years, I think the coach and his staff haven’t done Mark O’Neill and his team justice.
From the perspective of a middle-tier club that plateau is success. If we can remain at this level we'll eventually win a premiership. The risk is dropping below this level, thinking we can squeeze some magical improvement out of our resource spend by just sacking a coach who is consistently outperforming the rest of the NRL.
We didn't fade out in our most recent finals series. We pushed the premiers down to the wire.
It doesn't matter whether they were sacked, the point is they were replaced, which is what merkins are advocating for Arthur's. We shouldn't have extended him so he would be gone. It's no different to sacking him from a continuity perspective.
Strong clubs that win premierships don't hope to arse a few consecutive wins at finals time. They challenge for the minor premiership year after year and then just need an average level of luck. This includes the Roosters under Stuart and Robinson, even though neither coach built the systems that produced such strong squads. Cleary didn't build the system that produced his current squad. What built it was money: hiring the right people to set it up and then committing to continuous high spending to maintain it. Bellamy didn't even build the current Storm system. They already had future hall-of-famers Slater, Cronk and Smith in their system when he arrived. The success was built from the ground up with their recruitment/retention system, and that takes money, especially now that every club sees it as the way to beat the NRL salary cap. It's not coaches doing this. It's CEOs and their staff, supported by varying levels of financial backing at each club.
No that’s right we faded in the middle of the season which cost us a top 4 spot and any chance to win a comp.
Not that many. Anderson, Cronin and Hilditch?
Sorry but if we bow out week 2 this year (and again next year) that is not success.
It is for this club sadly, any year we don't win a spoon is a f**king celebration.
Why not? We haven't done it gorgeous nine years, now.
Imagine if he had the spine that Bea has to work with??
Other than good forwards, which back have we signed who'd make it in the top 10 of the comp for the last 5 years? The last one I say was Moses and an aging Ferguson.
It's not a fade, merkin, it's a form slump. Every club goes through them. The difference is the stronger clubs win more during a slump; the Storm had a period before the finals (and after beating Penrith) where they conceded over 18 points per game (compared to less than 12 for the rest of the season). That was their form slump, but the only game they lost was against us. A weaker team (like Parra) can have a form slump and cop consecutive floggings.
