I'm sorry but I think by now we have learned that Stephen Kearney must go.
Despite the fact that we only lost by a Benji Marshall field goal yesterday that must go down as an awful display and that fact is only clouded by the fact that this side as played quite dreadfully this year, particularly in that disaster against Penrith.
Despite the fact that our attack yesterday was quite awful for the first hour I believe that it was our defensive effort that was the biggest flaw to come out of yesterdays' match, it looked as if they literally did not know how to defend at a NRL level.
In the other thread about yesterday's match a lot has been said about how individual player mistakes cost us the game both in defense and attack, and that is of course correct but for me this stems from a lack of confidence, both from the fact that we have an abysmal record this season and are sitting at the bottom of the table and the other fact that at very least some of the player's must be naturally doubting the ability and the plan of Stephen Kearney simply because he has been in charge of these displays.
The decision to dismiss Chris Sandow to reserve grade is for me a puzzling one. It must be said that Chris Sandow has not been playing to a world-class standard at halfback, however I do not believe that he has playing to a particularly bad standard, that worse of Casey McGuire. This decision may also come back to haunt Kearney as McGuire is on report and may well be suspended for Friday's match against the Bulldogs forcing Kearney's hand in returning Sandow to the starting side, a lack of faith by the players in this move could have also lead to a lack of confidence yesterday.
Last season I was in support of Kearney, despite the fact that we were not performing to the best of our abilities I believed that with the signings of Chris Sandow and Willie Tonga we would perform to a level of a team around 9th-12th and hoping for a bit of momentum to push us in to the Top 8, this is something which I now see as very unlikely.
For me, the question must not be whether to sack Stephen Kearney but who to replace Stephen Kearney with, this is like a Chelsea situation where they could bring in an established caretaker in Roberto di Matteo to stabilise the squad and perhaps look to a world-class manager in a Jose Mourinho to take-over in the off-season, we do not have this luxury so we must be careful that if we sack Stephen Kearney, which on the balance of probabilities is probably the correct decision that we actually end up with an improvement, at very least a coach with NRL coaching experience and unfortunately there aren't a whole host of quality candidates with their hands up.
. I just hope whoever they go with - and let's face it, Kearney's days are numbered - they get full control over all aspects of the NRL squad.
