Rumours and Stuff

[Poupou Escobar]

But wouldn't he be wise to wait until November?

 

[hindy111]

Even I didn't read all that. You just know it is a whole lot of excuses with data that is backing up his excuses the way he wants it all to be backed up.

Bottom line. It just takes one man to fix it all. He can be the guy right at the top like a Politis/Chairman type or he can be the General Manager/CEO or he can be the guy who restructures and oversees your junior development, recruitment/development guy or he can be the coach. If it is a Politis guy then you are blessed because he will always get you all the others that are the best at what they do.

If it is the General Manager/CEO it's similar to Politis and they will get the best to fill all the vital positions below. If it is the junior development, recruitment/development guy then it is a little harder in the sense that he may be doing all the right things and bringing in the best from your catchment area and outside but the others within the club are boofheads and not getting the job done and eventually this guy will get frustrated and leave when better run clubs come a knocking. If it is the Coach similar to the Football Manager guy and he will be lost real quick to a better run club.

Of course all these guys need for the $5m non player salary cap to be spent in its entirety. If it is spent in full, no club, not even the Roosters have a monetary advantage over any other in the football department, so it then comes down to the higher ups in your organisation to bring the right other guys into your organisation. Parra is one of the top 3 or 4 clubs in the league as far as wealth of resources and profile, so if the management is football savvy then getting the right underlings to the joint should be almost procedural like. Most great football managers and coaches would love to be part of a club like ours as long as we gave them all the resources that they will demand.

Now as far as our current situation is concerned I would suggest we have a stable and decent but not great General Manager/CEO(Board) that know how to run the business but are a little lost when it comes to the football side of things. Whoever is in charge of junior development, recruitment/development(I think we have a team doing it at Parra) they are doing an adequate job, but not great and if they don't recover from all the quality player losses and potential losses that are looming they will be shown to be doing a sh*t job of maintaining the modicum of success that they have had over the last 3 seasons. As for the coach that the Board have hired and rehired and rehired and rehired unless he can get the bickies this season it will be seen as a failure again of not being able to smell the coffee and persisting with a guy that has thus far shown he is a one trick pony and can only get us so far.

Excuses are for losers. We should never be in the excuses group of clubs. 36+ years without a title is shameful for a club of our stature. Quality gets you quality results. It's not that Parra aren't capable due to finances or resources. It is due to the people we keep settling on to manage these extremely and vitally important roles are generally of second tear quality. If we ever have higher aspirations we should leave no stone unturned to bring the best to our club. Period! This is where the no excuses mantra starts. Period!

I heard Corey Parker say something smart for the first time the other day. Yes I know, funny. But he rightfully said that 'A' grade personality types tend to hire 'A' grade personality types around them, Whereas 'B' grade personality types tend to hire 'B' and 'C' grade personality types around them. I think that that basically sums up our situation here at Parra.

Hahaha...I just noticed how long my sh*t post is too...Hahahaha..

I just didn't want it to end. It was so good.

 

[hindy111]

But wouldn't he be wise to wait until November?

Look. I've been reported for some vile, foul language. A vulgar attack. I may be banned.

 

[I'm a loser baby...]

Look. I've been reported for some vile, foul language. A vulgar attack. I may be banned.

They wouldn't dare do that to someone in your condition.

 

[yy_cheng]

Dang, matto price now would've gone up more

 

[hindy111]

They wouldn't dare do that to someone in your condition.

It would be cruel.

 

[Matty Bhoy]

how good is dylan Brown speed can step off left and right and non of that hoppity hop skippity skip shite Our retention team would be wise to extend him NOW

He was absolutely outstanding. If we lose Mahoney, Matto, Papa etc but retain Dyl and the other main players I think that’s still ideal. Yep it hurts but I think the others are far more replaceable.

 

[hineyrulz]

3 on the cusp of Origin and 2 that don't qualify but will be in the NZ side.

Surely you can see the talent?

He talks up the talent in the side when it suits his argument, then when it doesn't he bags them quicker than you can say Bea Arthur.

 

[lucablight]

It's only bizarre if you don't understand it, and you won't understand it if you don't try and understand why the clubs that win consistently manage to do so.

Premierships are the result of being competitive and having some luck over a period of time. They aren't something that is achieved by taking a bottom ranked club (e.g. Parramatta in 2013) and inevitably building over a predefined number of years until the guaranteed grand final win magically occurs, followed by a rebuild. If there were any guarantees of this every club would be doing it, and they would all take turns going through this cycle and winning competitions. The fact of a salary cap might lull merkins into thinking this is the sort of consistently fair and level competition that we should have. But there is so much more than just the salary cap at play. Some clubs are just stronger than others, so when they peak they are (almost) guaranteed to win a premiership within a certain timeframe. Other clubs are less strong and so when they peak their 'premiership window' is smaller and their chances of winning the required three consecutive finals games is much lower. It doesn't mean they're no chance but maybe in a two to four year period they will be a 25% or 30% chance of winning a comp. They might jag a comp in that time (e.g. Sharks in 2016-18) or they might not (e.g. Raiders in 2019-20). It takes some luck. But we can tell the strong clubs by their overall win rate over a number of years.

Here's a measure of how strong each club has been over the past decade (regular season wins) compared with number of premierships:

Club	Regular season wins	Premierships
Storm	173	3
Chooks	146	3
Bunnies	144	1
Panthers	138	1
Sharks	125	1
Seagulls	124	0
Broncos	118	0
Raiders	118	0
Cowboys	115	1
Eels	115	0
Bulldogs	106	0
Dragons	101	0
Warriors	97	0
Tigers	92	0
Knights	88	0
Titans	88	0

Now leaving aside the fact that some of these teams haven't been equally strong across the entire ten year period (e.g. we have improved in the second half of the decade while the Dogs have declined), we can infer some probabilities from this table that we can't confirm nor deny, but at least form an evidence-based theory about how often certain clubs should expect a premiership in a ten year period based on how strong they are over that period.

The key data points that show the probabilistic nature of this are the ten year win numbers for Cronulla (1 premiership) and Manly (0 premierships). It is quite possible that a team winning ~52% of games over ten years has a 50% chance of also winning a premiership in that time. In this decade Cronulla's coin turned up heads while Manly's turned up tails. Below those two we have Parramatta, North Qld, Canberra and Brisbane, each with about 49% win rate. One in four of these teams won a comp in that time so perhaps their chance of winning during the decade was 25%. The Cowboys got lucky while the other three didn't. The six teams below them had premiership chances somewhere less than 25% (perhaps 0% in some cases) and none of them got lucky. Likewise at the top, the Storm won 73% of their games over the decade in question. Maybe they were a 99% chance of winning one, with reduced chances of two and three (and four) premierships during the decade. The three clubs between Cronulla and Melbourne all won a similar number of games (between 58% and 62%) over the ten years and each won at least one premiership. Maybe they were all 90% chance (or more) of winning at least one. Maybe they were all a 50% chance of winning two, but Souths and Penrith were both unlucky, while the Roosters with three premierships were very lucky over that decade?

The point is when you look at very small, cherry-picked data sets like week two finals wins you will be fooled by your human desire for narratives, when the reality is in the much bigger data. Here's the same table with week three finals appearances included (column four is preliminary finals per 100 regular season wins):

Club	Reg.wins	Prelims	Prelims/100 reg.wins	Premierships
Storm	173	8	4.6	3
Chooks	146	6	4.1	3
Bunnies	144	7	4.9	1
Panthers	138	3	2.2	1
Sharks	125	2	1.6	1
Seagulls	124	3	2.4	0
Broncos	118	2	1.7	0
Raiders	118	3	2.5	0
Cowboys	115	3	2.6	1
Eels	115	0	0.0	0
Bulldogs	106	2	1.9	0
Dragons	101	0	0.0	0
Warriors	97	0	0.0	0
Tigers	92	0	0.0	0
Knights	88	1	1.1	0
Titans	88	0	0.0	0

Here we see a few glaring outliers, specifically Parramatta, Canterbury and Newcastle. We have underachieved for converting regular season wins to preliminary finals appearances but how much has luck been a factor? We know that the smaller the sample the more it is skewed by randomness. We have played in six games where a win would have gotten us to the preliminary final and lost all of them. But three of those were against the eventual premiers, one was against the losing grand finalists that year and another one was against the Storm (one of three total). The sixth (vs Souths in 2020) was the most winnable, but we had three of four outside backs unavailable from the previous week (Sivo, Jennings, Ferguson). It's horrific luck. But even worse luck is our most recent premiership window has coincided with the emergence of some incredibly powerful opponents. Three teams won 20+ games last year. That's never happened in the NRL era. In fact most years no team wins 20 games. Since 1998 only nine teams have won 20 games (actually eight plus Penrith's win rate in the shortened 2020 season was enough to win 21 games from 24) in a season and a full third of them occurred last year, during our premiership window. And this is why, at our peak, we might not win a grand final, and still lose a bunch of players to the salary cap. The point of premiership windows is that they close whether you won a premiership or not. They don't stay open until you win, and there's no foregone conclusions. Luck is always a factor, including how strong your finals opponents are.

We played Melbourne three times in the finals between 2017 and 2020. Their finals win rate during those four years was 9 from 12 (75%), including two premierships. Their win rate for the preceding four years was only 3 from 8 (38%) with no premierships. Would've been nice to play them three times during that period, but we didn't even f**king make the finals in that time. But maybe that explains why their finals win rate was so low? Like I said, luck is always a factor. We just don't know how much. You need to look at some big data to get these insights.

I appreciate the effort you went through to write all this up but none of that explains why we are losing so many players whilst not having the finals success to justify that. Would you agree that it’s finals success and origin representation that primarily drives up the value of players? That hasn’t been the case for us. So I do think it’s strange that we are being gutted as much as some of the proclaimed statistically strongest clubs of modern times without the same level of finals success to show for it.
Realistically I don’t think we’ve had the team to win the entire thing until 2020 but I think we could have done better than we have in the last few seasons. 2017 was a massive finals failure against the Thurston-less Cowboys. 2018 should never have ended with the spoon. 2019 we were unlucky by having to face Melbourne in week 2 and 2020 we did indeed get unlucky with injuries. 2021 was a huge missed opportunity because we had the talent to go all the way (which you were not willing to admit at the time) but clowned for a huge portion of the season which resulted in us finishing 6th and having to play Penrith in week 2. Even then we dominated them for most of that game but failed the land the finishing blow. If you’re playing to win a grand final you’re going to come up against strong opponents. How many times can you use the excuse about having to face a strong opponent when you were also good enough to win it all? Upsets happen in sport all the time. No one is expecting a premiership every season but it’s reasonable to hope for an upset occasionally if you have the squad to cause one.

 

[lucablight]

No way people can say we don’t have X factor when we have Brown and Moses on this team.

 

[IFR33K]

They wouldn't dare do that to someone in your condition.

The insomnia could be off the scale

 

[Poupou Escobar]

He talks up the talent in the side when it suits his argument, then when it doesn't he bags them quicker than you can say Bea Arthur.

Mate it's a good side. I never said it wasn't. And we have a good club. But our club isn't one of the best resourced (not even close to the best) and our team isn't as good as a couple of others in the comp. But it is probably as good or better than 13 other teams. Only Melbourne and Penrith are clearly better. But we are also at the peak of our premiership window. Next year there will be maybe half a dozen sides better than us. That's nobody's fault. It doesn't need a scapegoat. Even the Panthers will need to rebuild. Only Melbourne seems to be able to avoid it.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

I appreciate the effort you went through to write all this up but none of that explains why we are losing so many players whilst not having the finals success to justify that. Would you agree that it’s finals success and origin representation that primarily drives up the value of players?

No. I think it's week-to-week performance over one or more seasons. Or else why were the Tigers, Warriors and Bulldogs so desperate to sign our players? Papali'i, Niukore and Mahoney have 12 finals appearances and zero Origins between them. It was hardly big games driving their prices up. What made them more expensive was developing from nobodies to genuine first graders at our club.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Realistically I don’t think we’ve had the team to win the entire thing until 2020 but I think we could have done better than we have in the last few seasons. 2017 was a massive finals failure against the Thurston-less Cowboys.

Right, except they also beat the Sharks and Roosters in that finals series. That means we all underrated them, rather than that we should've beaten them. They might've been missing Thurston but they still had four players picked in Origin that year plus Taumalolo. Our only Origin-class player was a winger.

2018 should never have ended with the spoon.

Agreed. Arthur's only failure at our club, imo. And the recovery was swift and well done.

2019 we were unlucky by having to face Melbourne in week 2 and 2020 we did indeed get unlucky with injuries. 2021 was a huge missed opportunity because we had the talent to go all the way (which you were not willing to admit at the time) but clowned for a huge portion of the season which resulted in us finishing 6th and having to play Penrith in week 2.

I admitted at the start of the year that we were contenders (not favourites), just like we are this year. We are a good chance of losing any finals match to a better side, and a roughly 50% chance of losing to any team at our level. Luck is always a factor. It was a factor in 2021 and it's a factor this year.

Even then we dominated them for most of that game but failed the land the finishing blow. If you’re playing to win a grand final you’re going to come up against strong opponents. How many times can you use the excuse about having to face a strong opponent when you were also good enough to win it all?

Well it's not an excuse. The fact is you don't get to choose which games you win or lose. You try to win all of them and take your luck on the day. We could've beaten Penrith last year and we could beat them if we play them in the finals again this year. And if we beat them nitwits will say we learned from last year's loss when the fact is we will have had better luck than we did last year.

Upsets happen in sport all the time. No one is expecting a premiership every season but it’s reasonable to hope for an upset occasionally if you have the squad to cause one.

Hopefully we have some luck this year.

 

[Obscene Assassin]

how good is dylan Brown speed can step off left and right and non of that hoppity hop skippity skip shite Our retention team would be wise to extend him NOW

Yep, we're going to have to pay overs for him anyway. May as well save us the headache and get it done quickly

 

[hindy111]

The insomnia could be off the scale

I only had 7hrs last night

 

[IFR33K]

I only had 7hrs last night

Don’t be greedy mate

 

[hindy111]

Right, except they also beat the Sharks and Roosters in that finals series. That means we all underrated them, rather than that we should've beaten them. They might've been missing Thurston but they still had four players picked in Origin that year plus Taumalolo. Our only Origin-class player was a winger.
Agreed. Arthur's only failure at our club, imo. And the recovery was swift and well done.

I admitted at the start of the year that we were contenders (not favourites), just like we are this year. We are a good chance of losing any finals match to a better side, and a roughly 50% chance of losing to any team at our level. Luck is always a factor. It was a factor in 2021 and it's a factor this year.

Well it's not an excuse. The fact is you don't get to choose which games you win or lose. You try to win all of them and take your luck on the day. We could've beaten Penrith last year and we could beat them if we play them in the finals again this year. And if we beat them nitwits will say we learned from last year's loss when the fact is we will have had better luck than we did last year.
Hopefully we have some luck this year.

We could beat them but I wouldn't be confident of beating Penrith or Storm in the finals. Yes we beat them in the regular season. Finals is a different ball game.

Let's see how we build after origin I guess. And injuries.

 

[hindy111]

Yep, we're going to have to pay overs for him anyway. May as well save us the headache and get it done quickly

Yes. Agree. Need to sign him and Moses up then work the rest out.

 

[King-Gutho94]

We could beat them but I wouldn't be confident of beating Penrith or Storm in the finals. Yes we beat them in the regular season. Finals is a different ball game.

Let's see how we build after origin I guess. And injuries.

I think this year is probably our best shot of beating Melbourne in a final during the BA tenure.

We actually believe we can beat Melbourne in any conditions home/away & dry/wet.

I think Melbourne have most teams beaten before the match just from so much scarring of previous encounters.

That's changed for Parra and Penrith both teams know they can beat them and Melbourne are 1/7 against those 2 teams since cam smith retired end of 2020.

In the past we have always been a long shot.

Since our last final against Melbourne in 2020 we are 3/3 against them and its not like Melbourne have been bad or depleted we have stood up to the challenge and won.