Please, read my posts. I've said that I don't agree with everything he does as a coach. I'll say it again:
I don't agree with all choices Mary has done as a coach which reflects his overall ability in my perspective.
I'm not related to Mary, I dont have any secret affiliation at all, if Bellamy or Green were available I would say go after them for sure.
Here is my main point:
When we win, Mary gets hardly any praise at all and the players get 90-95% of the credit. When we lose, Mary gets 90-95% of the blame.
That my friend is one screwed up way of giving an honest, balanced, and mature analysis of a team's performance on any given day. Mary is blamed for all the bad things that happen, he is hardly ever blamed for all the good things that happen.
What are your thoughts about that?
My thoughts is that it is, for the most part, completely justified. If we played the exact same game every week, against the same opposition, then maybe it would be valid. But we dont, and its not.
There's a handful of games this year that I could directly attribute to Mary. Melbourne at Kogarah is one, he got the team primed and pumped. Titans was another. And likewise, I dont necessarily blame him completely for the losses; for example, while I can attribute the fact that we lost to Melbourne to his failures in selection and bench rotation, i dont blame him for the fact that we conceded 50.
And so on.
But you make out like the coach and players are equals. They arent. They should share a mutual respect but the coach is the f**king leader. He is the boss. He is responsible for getting the best out of his team and he is completely accountable for their failures. Part of this is strategy and tactics, where Mary falls down miserably. Part of this is motivation, where Mary falls down partially. And part of this is season-long management of the team and performance, where in the past he has proven to struggle.
What I attribute our early season form to this year is the work of Mary's support staff and, by extension, the players. I've struggled to see any sort of strategy or tactics that contribute to our success. What I've seen is a primed, intense team in peak physical conditioning (thanks to the conditioning staff) come firing out of the blocks and blow teams off the park while they are figuring out their own patterns and strategies. I've seen individual brilliance by players not sticking to a specific game plan that have pulled wins out of losses. And I've seen other teams who've countered our game plan absolutely destroy us because our coach is unable to recognise a deficiency and adapt to it.
On top of that, Mary has been absolutely kissed on the dick with some of his players this year and it can be attributed heavily to recruitment and retention. Matt Dufty, for his defensive issues, has proven the ability to sniff a try and has saved Mary from looking far worse than he does several times - not through particular game plans, purely through his own ability. The intensity and ferocity of the back row (who all showed this ability before Mary got their hands on him) is out of this world. And we have exceptional on field leadership from James Graham who has ensured that we arent clocking off in the late stage of the game. Sure, Mary deserves a bit of credit for picking these guys (cause like, he had so many choices) but all these, not directly coaching, contribute heavily to success.
Comments like 'Mary's not the one dropping balls out there' and so on show a sever lack of understanding of the actual role of the first grade coach. In truth, while IMO we are overachieving this year thus far, we have a very good set of cattle and that has been proven throughout the year. The reason we consistently drop off as the year goes on (and why many are predicting the same this year) is that the coach doesnt have the actual coaching ability (motivation, game tactics and season strategy) to maintain that success.
