Some stats.

[Iafeta]

Ivan Cleary coached sides have something similar to Wayne Bennett coached sides. They try to grind opponents and take advantage of errors rather than be overly expressive with ball in hand. Particularly since Wade got injured. Cleary had the perfect tactic for the Warriors. Price would make a tonne of metres, Wiki would do a reasonable job (until he hit 'past used by date') going forward, and McKinnon would float around the middle. Rovelli and Witt would do much the same, acting as a link-chain player so that if Wade was scrambled, he could offload to one of them to hit another player on the charge. The difference is that Bennett has all his players understanding their role extremely well. He makes subtle changes every game, take when he played us last week he knew that Hohaia was short of confidence and he also knew the Warriors were meak in defence in the middle and so offloads could be taken advantage of, so he put together a plan to take advantage of that. He still had the Bennett basic framework, but he added bombs that would force Hohaia to compete and he got the likes of Nightingale backing up Dan Hunt in the middle.

I just don't see anything constructive from the Warriors under Cleary, since McKinnon went down. He never seems to have had a plan B. He's had some fair cattle too. Kevin Locke... never understood how to use the guy. Brent Tate... demanded he be a dummy half runner and be safe in the tackle... nothing else. Ben Matulino... where's Ben's offload gone? Where's Ben's balance and agility at the line to go between defenders gone? The list goes on and on. Players don't run good lines these days. Only Mannering against the Roosters off Mateo ran an excellent line for a long range break, I can't remember too many others where his players knew how to execute an opportunity against a defence that lost its structure. Attacking sets, his teams wait tillt he last tackle to bomb across field and don't even look to use the first five tackles.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I think we won't make the 8 this year. I also think crowd numbers will dip significantly. Not only because of the results, but because people want big hits, they want smart ball play, they want line breaks, they want tries and thats not how we're coached. We'd be happy to take a 14-10 grind win rather than put a team to the sword. I also think we'll start losing some of our young players. Personally I have a feeling Kevin Locke will move on soon to a club that wants to give him a shot. While Fisiiahi is a great talent, I think he could play elsewhere, maybe centre or wing, whereas I think Locke is exclusively a fullback or maybe a five eighth. Both of those guys have got to be in positions where they can use their agility or skill. A guy like Locke wants to be involved and he wants to play a prominent role, if he can't get it here, another coach will take a punt on him.

I also think John Hart and Wayne Scurrah will be lethargic about making a change in the head coaches role. They have a lot of faith in Ivan Cleary, maybe at times a little too much and he could get comfortable and complacent. I have to give them credit for the times they have supported him and he has pulled it out of the myre, and irrespective of whether he was to go, I think some of the defensive structures he has put in place and the discipline whereby now we barely go to the judiciary whereas we used to be there each and every week will leave us in good stead. But the basics are in place and we now need to expand on that.

FTR, I think Ivan Cleary is a very good man, and I think he also has the ability to be an extremely fine coach. But I don't think his overly defensive style of game is what this current Warriors squad needs, whereas I think an expressive and motivating coach in Brian McClennan, who has come up through the Auckland ranks, understands the New Zealand game, and has done an extremely good job at all levels he's coached at including the international level is the guy who could get the Warriors expressive style back.

 

[ozbash]

Ivan Cleary coached sides have something similar to Wayne Bennett coached sides. They try to grind opponents and take advantage of errors rather than be overly expressive with ball in hand. Particularly since Wade got injured. Cleary had the perfect tactic for the Warriors. Price would make a tonne of metres, Wiki would do a reasonable job (until he hit 'past used by date') going forward, and McKinnon would float around the middle. Rovelli and Witt would do much the same, acting as a link-chain player so that if Wade was scrambled, he could offload to one of them to hit another player on the charge. The difference is that Bennett has all his players understanding their role extremely well. He makes subtle changes every game, take when he played us last week he knew that Hohaia was short of confidence and he also knew the Warriors were meak in defence in the middle and so offloads could be taken advantage of, so he put together a plan to take advantage of that. He still had the Bennett basic framework, but he added bombs that would force Hohaia to compete and he got the likes of Nightingale backing up Dan Hunt in the middle.

I just don't see anything constructive from the Warriors under Cleary, since McKinnon went down. He never seems to have had a plan B. He's had some fair cattle too. Kevin Locke... never understood how to use the guy. Brent Tate... demanded he be a dummy half runner and be safe in the tackle... nothing else. Ben Matulino... where's Ben's offload gone? Where's Ben's balance and agility at the line to go between defenders gone? The list goes on and on. Players don't run good lines these days. Only Mannering against the Roosters off Mateo ran an excellent line for a long range break, I can't remember too many others where his players knew how to execute an opportunity against a defence that lost its structure. Attacking sets, his teams wait tillt he last tackle to bomb across field and don't even look to use the first five tackles.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I think we won't make the 8 this year. I also think crowd numbers will dip significantly. Not only because of the results, but because people want big hits, they want smart ball play, they want line breaks, they want tries and thats not how we're coached. We'd be happy to take a 14-10 grind win rather than put a team to the sword. I also think we'll start losing some of our young players. Personally I have a feeling Kevin Locke will move on soon to a club that wants to give him a shot. While Fisiiahi is a great talent, I think he could play elsewhere, maybe centre or wing, whereas I think Locke is exclusively a fullback or maybe a five eighth. Both of those guys have got to be in positions where they can use their agility or skill. A guy like Locke wants to be involved and he wants to play a prominent role, if he can't get it here, another coach will take a punt on him.

I also think John Hart and Wayne Scurrah will be lethargic about making a change in the head coaches role. They have a lot of faith in Ivan Cleary, maybe at times a little too much and he could get comfortable and complacent. I have to give them credit for the times they have supported him and he has pulled it out of the myre, and irrespective of whether he was to go, I think some of the defensive structures he has put in place and the discipline whereby now we barely go to the judiciary whereas we used to be there each and every week will leave us in good stead. But the basics are in place and we now need to expand on that.

FTR, I think Ivan Cleary is a very good man, and I think he also has the ability to be an extremely fine coach. But I don't think his overly defensive style of game is what this current Warriors squad needs, whereas I think an expressive and motivating coach in Brian McClennan, who has come up through the Auckland ranks, understands the New Zealand game, and has done an extremely good job at all levels he's coached at including the international level is the guy who could get the Warriors expressive style back.

In other words, we're history till the game plan (M.Vatuvei) comes back ?

 

[Rich102]

In other words, we're history till the game plan (M.Vatuvei) comes back ?

Two things:
1. Manu is a great player but rescuing this is beyond any one player.
2. The better he gets the more he will be targeted and, sadly, the more injuries he will suffer.

 

[Iafeta]

In other words, we're history till the game plan (M.Vatuvei) comes back ?

Correct. I've never known a team to be so reliant on a winger. To me that suggests poor coaching. The Broncos had Sailor and Tuqiri who played similar styles of football to Manu but they could cover them. With the way we play we can't cover Manu.

 

[Meth]

In other words, we're history till the game plan (M.Vatuvei) comes back ?

not that we've figured out how to use him either

 

[One Warrior]

Ivan Cleary coached sides have something similar to Wayne Bennett coached sides. They try to grind opponents and take advantage of errors rather than be overly expressive with ball in hand. Particularly since Wade got injured. Cleary had the perfect tactic for the Warriors. Price would make a tonne of metres, Wiki would do a reasonable job (until he hit 'past used by date') going forward, and McKinnon would float around the middle. Rovelli and Witt would do much the same, acting as a link-chain player so that if Wade was scrambled, he could offload to one of them to hit another player on the charge. The difference is that Bennett has all his players understanding their role extremely well. He makes subtle changes every game, take when he played us last week he knew that Hohaia was short of confidence and he also knew the Warriors were meak in defence in the middle and so offloads could be taken advantage of, so he put together a plan to take advantage of that. He still had the Bennett basic framework, but he added bombs that would force Hohaia to compete and he got the likes of Nightingale backing up Dan Hunt in the middle.

I just don't see anything constructive from the Warriors under Cleary, since McKinnon went down. He never seems to have had a plan B. He's had some fair cattle too. Kevin Locke... never understood how to use the guy. Brent Tate... demanded he be a dummy half runner and be safe in the tackle... nothing else. Ben Matulino... where's Ben's offload gone? Where's Ben's balance and agility at the line to go between defenders gone? The list goes on and on. Players don't run good lines these days. Only Mannering against the Roosters off Mateo ran an excellent line for a long range break, I can't remember too many others where his players knew how to execute an opportunity against a defence that lost its structure. Attacking sets, his teams wait tillt he last tackle to bomb across field and don't even look to use the first five tackles.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I think we won't make the 8 this year. I also think crowd numbers will dip significantly. Not only because of the results, but because people want big hits, they want smart ball play, they want line breaks, they want tries and thats not how we're coached. We'd be happy to take a 14-10 grind win rather than put a team to the sword. I also think we'll start losing some of our young players. Personally I have a feeling Kevin Locke will move on soon to a club that wants to give him a shot. While Fisiiahi is a great talent, I think he could play elsewhere, maybe centre or wing, whereas I think Locke is exclusively a fullback or maybe a five eighth. Both of those guys have got to be in positions where they can use their agility or skill. A guy like Locke wants to be involved and he wants to play a prominent role, if he can't get it here, another coach will take a punt on him.

I also think John Hart and Wayne Scurrah will be lethargic about making a change in the head coaches role. They have a lot of faith in Ivan Cleary, maybe at times a little too much and he could get comfortable and complacent. I have to give them credit for the times they have supported him and he has pulled it out of the myre, and irrespective of whether he was to go, I think some of the defensive structures he has put in place and the discipline whereby now we barely go to the judiciary whereas we used to be there each and every week will leave us in good stead. But the basics are in place and we now need to expand on that.

FTR, I think Ivan Cleary is a very good man, and I think he also has the ability to be an extremely fine coach. But I don't think his overly defensive style of game is what this current Warriors squad needs, whereas I think an expressive and motivating coach in Brian McClennan, who has come up through the Auckland ranks, understands the New Zealand game, and has done an extremely good job at all levels he's coached at including the international level is the guy who could get the Warriors expressive style back.

Agree with all that you are saying, sometimes it is so depressing being a Warriors fan thinking about how much better we could be or could of been in the past, if certain players hadn't been let go or treated better. I seriously believe that after 2002 we should of won the premiership in 2003 or 2004, Campion and possibly Cleary should of been retained for another year or so, we were also crueled by PJ Marsh's injury and Mick Watson progressively destroyed the squad. Now Cleary is stifling the team, restricting the way certain players play and playing others out of position or not at all (Kevin Locke), I seriously hope we do not lose him. This team was being built I believe to play around another player, not Manu (he was a bonus that the team now can't seem to play without), however Sonny Fai was tragically taken from us. This is also why I believe Mateo was purchased although I don't think he will be half the player that Sonny Fai would of been.

 

[Iafeta]

Great point that we don't even really create space for Manu... we just think its ok to give him the ball and ask him to steam roll them and then go woe was me how come Locke, Kemp, Ah Van et al failed on the other wing. Manu gets by because Manu is a deadset freak. At one point, we did get it right. I remember a game in 2005 when Tony Kemp was coaching with Cleary and Campion as his assistants against Newcastle in Newcastle. We were getting rolled, and rolled badly. Manu either got three tries that day, or he got two and basically made the other. He made two long range line breaks, and then for the other try walked over 4 of them in no space at all. The first two tries though were excellent, nice sweeping movements to the left where he was given a bit of space. He put the foot down, took them on, and won the day. Ever since then he's been a freak at taking bombs going forward and scoring or bulldozing blokes, but rarely does he get it in space.

Again, I'll mention we go woe was me, Locke, Kemp, Ah Van et al are all hopeless. But they barely ever got the ball with time and space. Neither does Vatuvei. Manu is just a freak. That to me is symptomatic of very, very poor coaching structure. Unless you're going to have Tuiaki on one wing and Vatuvei on the other you're selling your fringes up the river without a paddle.

 

[Lossy]

Updated stats in main post.