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Who replaces Cappy?

Big Marn

Bench
Messages
2,971
Yeah, I'm a bit pissy,

Im surprisingly non plussed about it all. I used to be the crazy guy that the neighbours could hear yelling at the TV during a Warriors game. The wife would look at me and say "Darling....he cant hear you...." if I told off a player for missing a tackle or throwing a forward pass, or if it was the ref making a bullshit call.

But i guess the last 5 seasons have conditioned me for this time of year and now im all desensitised to it all. Wish that wasnt the case...
 

Cold Roses

Juniors
Messages
1,793
I agree change is needed. But start with the coach who clearly can't.

but I'm wondering if the SJ era is more delusion...

I've been pretty lenient on McFadden up to now. But I think he has had sufficient time to make some significant change. Last nights exhibition of dropsies shows that something just isn't working.

As far as SJ goes, for me, he has one more year to show his goods, and then I'm afraid it'll be obvious that he's as good now as he'll ever be. I don't doubt his desire, unlike others, I don't think he is afraid of the physical side of things. I just think he's an above average half who needs to play behind a dominant pack to really shine.
 

JJ

Immortal
Messages
32,744
Yeah the model is wrong, there is no excuse for this year - two teams ruled out and we're still shit, people got excited when we beat the Knights at home FFS!

Coach unfortunately is demonstrably not up to it, it starts there, surely we have the cattle and talent to compete
 

Benek

Juniors
Messages
1,974
The problem is, and always had been, that we desperately need a new good coach at a time when there are very few, if any, quality candidates on the market. It would be easy to say yeah sure let's get a new coach if Bellemy or Hasler or others of that calibre were available to throw the cash at. But when we're left with maybe Cleary or even less maybe Toovey, and that's it, I can see how Doyle might just decide we have to stick with Cappy until someone proven does become available. There's no sense changing coaches if we end up swapping one mediocre guy for another, just for the sake of change. I hate that this is the position the club is in when it feels like we are one great coach and maybe one or two new players away from a potential grand final quality side.
 

Penrose Warrior

First Grade
Messages
9,481
Cleary is a great coach, let's make no bones about that. I've said plenty of times before that I don't understand the scepticism. If he's available to come back to NZ, we sign him. Pronto. He's rebuilt shitstorms like us before. Hold on, he's rebuilt our shitstorm before. And Penrith's. Then got absolutely knifed by Gould in something out of a murder mystery. Toovey, I'm not as sure about. He's not rebuilt clubs before. So I'm not massive on him. It's debateable whether he rode Hasler's coattails and kinda carried it off because he was a club legend.

But here's the thing. After 8 losses on the trot last year and 3 I think it was to start this year (thank you Newcastle) then being what was it, 3-7 at the bye? 4-6? Whatever it was...throughout that whole time, Doyle had to think 'gee, this guy might not be it'. From there, a contingency plan had to be in place. He had to be speaking to managers of coaches etc, or coaches themselves. My fear is that he hasn't been, and he has blind faith in McFail. Before Tangalife or anyone else comes out defending him, I have said before I'm a massive Doyle fan (or was). He is a great businessman. But at no stage in his business career that I'm aware of has he had to balance the faith in his main employee and a contingency plan. That doesn't happen outside league, or in his previous NRL role in regular employment matters. If someone's not up to it, he lets them go THEN finds the next guy. That's not applicable here. He needs to know now that if/when McFail's role is no longer tenable, then the next guy comes in. It can't be Morgan because he happens to be there, it has to be Morgan because he's better, and will do a top eight + job. It can't be anyone apart from someone who will do a top eight + job. But it kinda has to happen now if we miss the eight, because Matulino may go. Tui may go, signings may be missed because they don't want to play in a rabble under McFail. RTS may go to rugby. Who knows??? You cannot keep a guy after 3 (2.75 seasons) whatever who clearly can't coach, just because the previous CEO was a complete f**king dunce and re-signed him with no one snapping at our heels and no real intel on how good he'd be.

It's almost sad I get this wound up in it but I've not enjoyed this season one bit, and it sucks. The 2 hrs I enjoy after a hard working week, family/kids etc and I've either not watched, not enjoyed it or kinda half hoped we'd lose so a new coach would come in.
 

Diesel

Referee
Messages
23,793
We have 3/4, possibility the full Kiwis spine, Cappy isn't the man to be coaching this team
 

Penrose_11

Juniors
Messages
1,266
Not only am I scared McFadden will hold onto the job if we finish 9th, but if we f*** around with deciding on a replacement for to long, the pick of the crop will be gone. Cleary being talked about replacing Mary McGregor. Toovey being mentioned also. Not that they are be all and end all, but they are definitely in the conversation. There's other teams who'll also look to shore things up in the coming future. How strong is Jason Taylor's hold at the Tigs? Souths, Eels and Knights have all had crap seasons but at this stage can't see McGuire, Arthur or Brown being moved on. Trent Barrett must be on thin ice?? If changes are made, they'll all be looking at being 1st cab off the rank.
 

jaseg

Juniors
Messages
2,274
The problem is, and always had been, that we desperately need a new good coach at a time when there are very few, if any, quality candidates on the market. It would be easy to say yeah sure let's get a new coach if Bellemy or Hasler or others of that calibre were available to throw the cash at. But when we're left with maybe Cleary or even less maybe Toovey, and that's it, I can see how Doyle might just decide we have to stick with Cappy until someone proven does become available. There's no sense changing coaches if we end up swapping one mediocre guy for another, just for the sake of change. I hate that this is the position the club is in when it feels like we are one great coach and maybe one or two new players away from a potential grand final quality side.

Swapping one proven mediocre guy for someone who might be mediocre, or might be the next Green/Maguire/Robinson/Arthur etc. Key difference there.

We know Cappy isn't good enough - we don't know about alternatives yet. Guys like Justin Morgan... Garth Brennan.. the Walkers... maybe one of them is an improvement (I'm going to go out on a limb here and say ALL of them are likely an improvement - unlike Cappy when he took over, they have impressed in multiple other roles, except the Walkers who are 6-7 years into the same role). That's without talking about out of work guys who are proven to be better coaches than Cappy... Cleary & Toovey.

This whole false binary of Cappy or Hasler/Bellamy/Bennett etc is silly too. There's plenty of coaches who are an improvement on Cappy, even if they aren't as good as the top tier. I would be all for waiting it out to make a huge play at one of those guys if circumstances were different... but time isn't on our side (we had build time back when they chose Elliott over waiting a year for Bellamy - but we don't have that luxury right now). Our potential premiership window is limited - we need a change, and we need it now. We can't afford to wait.
 

ozbash

Referee
Messages
26,922
Jason Taylor, Trent Barrett, McGregor and probably Ivan, would be a step backwards (as hard as that may seem).

Out of all the available, ld throw a shitloads of money at Tooves with either Kearney or Kidwell (or both) as 2nd pick.
 

Skinner

Coach
Messages
13,581
Jason Taylor, Trent Barrett, McGregor and probably Ivan, would be a step backwards (as hard as that may seem).

Out of all the available, ld throw a shitloads of money at Tooves with either Kearney or Kidwell (or both) as 2nd pick.
No to Kearney or Kidwell from me. I'm a bit unsure on Toovey as well.
 

JJ

Immortal
Messages
32,744
Jason Taylor, Trent Barrett, McGregor and probably Ivan, would be a step backwards (as hard as that may seem).

Out of all the available, ld throw a shitloads of money at Tooves with either Kearney or Kidwell (or both) as 2nd pick.

I'm certainly not arguing for any of those guys, but why would you say they're a step back? Ivan's a step into the past, but surely you can't think McFadden is better?

As jaseg said there are many that would be better - at least Barrett can say injury has f**ked his season up, Brown and McGregor can say they have limited squads, Taylor is even on points with us and has lots of 'issues'. We've just produced the same stuff, and the funny thing is people got excited by beating Newcastle, and a Pearce-less Roosters (just), and being competitive through the Origin period... wow, never saw any of that coming...

McFadden might well be a good bloke, but he's not looking like a good coach - it makes no sense to hang on to him, none at all - whether it's Toovey, Cleary, Brennan, the Walkers, Morgan, Kearney, Kidwell or someone else, none of them are Hasler/Bellamy, but all are likely to be better than McFadden
 

ozbash

Referee
Messages
26,922
Agree.. I'd put crappy in the same pile as Mary, JT, Barrett. I think Ivan is only marginally better.

We have to go better, not equal so if I had the cheque book it would be Tooves .

The Walkers look good at 2nd div but are unproven.

What's happening to the Bunnies coach ?
At least he's proven..
 

ozbash

Referee
Messages
26,922
And just about all those excuses could apply to us but pre season, on paper, we had one of the best squads on the planet...

Only RTS was long term and I doubt his injury cost us the season, the coach did.

We had an obviously better fullback running around in reserve grade but he persisted with Tui
 

Shaun Hewitt

First Grade
Messages
6,625
Ive recently defended Cappy due to our streak of 11 games with only golden point losses.
This weekend though, for me, nail in the coffin.
Okay, sure, we had RTS ruled out for most of the season. Sure we had Henry ruled out as well
To be fair, Henry I don't think would have made any difference. RTS, sure theres a case. But each team has their own injury worries.

Roster like ours, simple, we should be in top 8, top 4 even.

Cappy needs to go, give him the rest of the season and FO Cappy imo.
 

vvvrulz

Coach
Messages
13,625
I took a moment to take stock on our season.

We won 10 out of 22 games. That's poor in any case, and with our roster it's actually pretty abysmal. Let's call the top 9 genuine contenders - we have the worst attack in the top 9 and comfortably the worst defence.

Of our wins:
- Let's not even bother counting the Knights, they're genuine garbage, it's as good as byes. Effectively we're actually 8 wins out of 20.
- Two of those were scraping past a poor Roosters outfit
- Two of those were against the Tits, who field much worse teams than ours
- One was bashing a phoned in Broncos just after Origin, we were good, but they were *bad*
- One was our B team defeating the Dragons who were terrible that day, impressive that our B team turned up though.
- We scraped past the Panthers at home, who we should have beaten by 12+, they weren't very good that day

Which leaves our genuinely, quality impressive showings of the season:
- Dogs win in Wellington
- The rest were losses, we were excellent against the Sharks and Manly, they were great performances and we could have won those.
- We turned in a solid performance against the Storm at home, but probably deserved to lose in the end

A lot is made of our golden points, but it's a bit rose tinted. We deserved to lose to the Raiders, it took a crazy last minute comeback which we blew anyway in the first minute of Golden Farce. We got the Panthers and the Roosters, and the other two were anyone's games.

So out of 22 games, I would say we had 6 good wins against half decent opposition.
All this with a favourable draw, lots of NZ games and a free spot on the ladder courtesy of Parra

With our squad, that's a D grade season.
 

Rich102

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
11,764
And just about all those excuses could apply to us but pre season, on paper, we had one of the best squads on the planet...

Only RTS was long term and I doubt his injury cost us the season, the coach did.

We had an obviously better fullback running around in reserve grade but he persisted with Tui

Even pre-season Cappy screwed up.
Playing weak squads in the pre-season games told us nothing. It wasn't till he put a serious squad out against the Dragons in Nelson that he found out he had serious weaknesses. Too late.
They carried that form on into the season proper.
 

Diesel

Referee
Messages
23,793
We are 9th with an * with a 10/22 record with our squad is terrible, that alone should be enough to send him packing. Injuries, well every team has them so you can only argue your case so much. Most of the squad isn't progressing, they're about the same, or regressing.

The top 3 we can forget, they're not coming.
Toovey - not sold on
Ivan - 50/50
Kearney - no
Kidwell - should've tried him around 2013/14
Walkers - no, not sure their ad hoc football brains suit our ad hoc players

What was Morgan like in the ESL?
Brennan is talked up, but do we want someone with no FG experience?
 

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