Well to address your first point - I understand the frustration based around being sold the same vision and continued failure. However, in fairness to the club Ivan was the perfect candidate and if it wasn't for his undiscovered lack of integrity he could've been the guy to turn this club around. We were winning games and competing every week and it would've worked long term. However, he left us high and dry with 3 of arguably the clubs worst ever contracts in history to crawl back to Penrith. That's not on the board that's on Ivan.
Unfortunately, those 3 terrible contracts were long term and transitioned into Madge's tenure. Having Packer, Reynolds and Mbye combine for around $2.6 million dollars and at one point all become unplayable derailed everything and it dug us into a hole in which thankfully Madge had eventually dug us out of. However, because of this results dipped and Madge was struggling to recruit players when we had finally become financially capable of making an impact in free agency. The club making the call on hiring Madge at that time was the right decision - he was a former premiership wining coach who was a no nonsense type and pretty much got rid of the junk. Madge isn't the most marketable coach but his methods work and his success is usually what sold players to join him - when you take the success away from Madge it took away his appeal from players to want to play for him. He pretty much just cleaned up Ivan's mess and helped install a very very successful junior nursery that I think we will all be thanking him for in the next 5 years. So on-field wise yes it wasn't a great period but overall Madge had done some good things as well that has been overlooked.
Benji has now been handed the keys to a successful junior system (arguably one of the best in the league), a mentor with the experience and pedigree in Sheens and has now been given a fresh clean salary cap. Early signs aren't as negative as previously mentioned. Recruitment wise we've attracted some serious talent Api, Papalili, Bateman, Klemmer, Sullivan, Seizer, Fainu brothers and doesn't seem like we're slowing down. All reports are that the culture is shifting and players are buying into the vision Benji is setting. Lately when we've finally had capable halves pairing we've been performing strongly even against the top teams so there's something to take away and build on. Another pre-season with the same team with fresh exciting halves and continued training with Benji in sole control will improve us I believe. I think this is the time we finally start to shift into a strong club but maybe we don't that's Rugby league.
Those first 7 games were due to chemistry issues and players learning to play with each other - I think Matty Johns said it well on his podcast with Cronk. We started to get to a period after those 7 games where our attack was clicking and players understood each other better. This isn't fantasy football you don't just switch up majority of your team and expect immediate success hence why the Dogs are having the same issue. Especially with someone as unique as Api, playing next to him takes time to adjust and our attack looked lost. However, attack isn't our issue right now it's currently our edge defence and I think that should be focussed heavily next preseason if we can clean that up we can make some serious steps.
However, if this Benji era doesn't end up working out best believe heads will roll. Deservingly so.
I appreciate your posts today.
I've always maintained that success in the NRL is roughly cyclical (3- or 5-year cycles) and it's uncommon for teams to stay at the top or at the bottom for multiple cycles.
However I think it's also true in the last 10 years that the competition has roughly settled into two camps of common "haves" and "have-nots". This means during the cyclical fortunes, we tend to see "haves" teams not fall too far and "have-not" teams not rise too high, such that the overall effect across 10+ seasons is you keep seeing the same sides habit the finals. And by definition, if you are making the finals, someone else is not. But the "have-nots" do populate the finals from time to time and this gives fans some level of satisfaction.
Specific to Tigers, in real terms we have observed these success cycles - 2004-2005, 2009-2011, 2016-2019. People will of course swat the recent patch away, but we did run 9th 3 out of 4 seasons, despite coaching and player instability, and a few wins here or there, or a bit of luck, and we are playing finals footy.
But of course this era of social media discussion seems to be lending itself to increasingly polar / binary / black+white opinions, so things either "are" or "are not" 99%, rather than being complicated and grey.
Tigers definitely did not make the finals since 2011 and Tigers definitely the worst team of the past 2 seasons. But aside from that, there's a lot of grey about how non-successful Tigers have been.
And when you get into the weeds, unfortunately there are some decisions or outcomes here and there that have hurt Tigers, that weren't necessarily badly planned. For example nobody wanted Tedesco to leave but the coach situation was unstable and Roosters came knocking - Roosters do this to a lot of clubs. Nobody was predicting Ivan going back to Penrith after previously being sacked. Madge looked like a wise signing on paper; Cleary and Madge are arguably the strongest coaching candidates we've ever had sign on.
But as one of the "have not" clubs, we need things to go just right to maintain any kind of success. And I'm not trying to make a point of excusing anyone or any specific decision, but to agree with what you have said, that there have been some poor decisions, but also some reasonable decisions that just haven't worked out.
I personally don't think the decisions have been definitely as bad as some people portrayed. The results are obviously bad, but Tigers 2023 are still pretty competitive for the comp's worst team; it's a strange one; they don't seem so far off any of another 8 or 10 sides. They just haven't been able to find that piece to put it all together.
I have a similar experience as a Spurs supporter in the EPL. I started in 2018 and during that time they've been no worse than 8th best out of 20, never anywhere near relegation, and 3 times 4th or better. They almost won the Premier League in 2016-17, played Champions League 4 times and made the CL Final once. Financially Spurs are much stronger than most EPL sides, but still some distance off the biggest clubs (owned by oil or American sports barons).
As a Tigers fan I think those Spurs results are all quite OK, all encouraging enough. BUT older Spurs fans are not happy because the club hasn't won a trophy since 2008. Like Tigers and finals, winning any kind of trophy, even a meaningless one, has an over-sized importance, because it's some measure of success. The club is privately owned by 2 UK businessmen and fans basically hate the owners for not spending enough money. They've changed managers 5 times in 6 seasons. Spurs' best player (Harry Kane) just left last week.
Therefore are Spurs a terrible club? No certainly not. Are the owners hopeless? Well firstly, it's their club, despite what fans say. And I am sure the owners wish for success just as much as anyone does, and think they are doing the best things they can. And the owners might be wrong, but you don't have the authority to overthrow them because you disagree - they own the club and you do not. Daniel Levy is basically Spurs' version of Pascoe, good with money and not good with football players (except that Levy actually does part-own Spurs).
