Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:26 am Posts: 16066 Member for 18 years
lefty goldblatt wrote:
Same here. To me, Powell comes across as an old fashioned "ranter and raver" in your Alex Murphy/Tony Barrow mould, rather than an "arm around the shoulder" Tony Smith kind of guy. Smith showed his determination with Gleeson, rather than Powell's "throwing baby and bath water" approach. That's (to me) what was needed.
Not sure he's a "ranter and raver" like that but I think he's a dour uncompromising Yorkshireman who won't indulge players that aren't with the programme. One of the reasons I was keen on the Powell appointment was because he seemed perfect for breaking the old "jobs for the boys" cliquey culture at the club. The other two coaches I would have liked: Brian McDermott and Shaun Wane, are similar characters.
Now...this approach does not always work. The warning analogy from another sport is Graeme Souness at Liverpool, when he took over a squad which needed an overhaul and managed to alienate everyone by moving too fast and he set the club back years. What really did for Souness was he made crap signings. There was logic behind the rest of what he was trying to do but when you move out good players and sign tripe you go in the wrong direction.
Challenge Cup winners 2009 2010 2012 2019 League Leaders 2011 2016
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:26 am Posts: 16066 Member for 18 years
lefty goldblatt wrote:
When Moran really started spending his money (Morley, then King and Monaghan x2) we've gone from perennial underachievers, to CC and GF regulars, with a bit of tweaking. Powell's "my way or the highway", and it's subsequent overhaul, could well be too much too soon. We let Smith go stale, and Price, well he was stale from the begining. All we needed (as I said) was a tweak. A bluff Yarkie has sent us back to the mid days of Cullen. A few stars, but, miles away from where we want/need to be.
Worth remembering that it took about 4-5 years to rebuild that team from when we started spending (signing Gleeson/Fa'afili) to becoming real contenders. We rebuilt then plateaued under Cullen/Lowes and then needed a tweak with a new coach/outlook which we got bringing in TS and the CCs started to arrive.
I think the situation at the end of the Price era was different. It wasn't a team packed with superstars which just needed a tweak to get us over the line. That's where lots of our fans thought we were over the last couple of years and you'd hear things like "we have as good a squad as anybody we just need the right coach". I never bought that argument. I thought we had a squad of good-but-not-great players who were a bit overrated and who weren't leaders and were soft when it came to turning round situations that were going against us. I didn't think any coach was going to get that group of players to win Grand Finals, we needed to refashion the type of player we had in the squad, find players with a different mentality, different level of hunger and find some leaders.
That meant we were more in the world of rebuild rather than tweak.
Challenge Cup winners 2009 2010 2012 2019 League Leaders 2011 2016
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:53 pm Posts: 9368 Location: Somewhere under the salary cap Member for 13 years
i have absolutley NO problem with the coach, getting rid of players like this and replacing them with short term options... even if they are of a lesser quality... we arent winning anything this season, so the open heart surgery is warranted.
His no1 priority is to get rid of the bad apples.... if we then get a replacement to the end of the season, also good, as it doesnt tie down the salary cap and the position can be properly recruited, for next season.
18 years
13 years
9 years
Get out of jail free. He's stunk for 12 months.
