jirskyr
Well-known member
I'm not quite sure about this first bit of the narrative?Benji is a second year coach last year Galvin this year Luai. He is not equipped to deal with this. It’s a problem we brought onto ourselves and the risk with a rookie. It’s a long shot it’s turned around unless we get serious recruits in and talented assistant coaches.
Tigers history is unfortunately full of players underperforming, walking out or falling foul of the coach.
Benji walked out on Potter
Farah got offside with Taylor
Moses got off the Ivan Cleary bus, followed by Tedesco and Woods
Nofo was dumped by Madge
I personally think a lot of it isn't tied directly to the calibre or experience of the coach, I think it's very much tied to the long-term under performance of the club.
In terms of Benji I actually think his player rapport and mgmt is about as good as I've seen from a Tigers coach, from the outside. It's not just his close history with well-regarded mentors like Bennett and Sheens, but also his own career and football intelligence.
I also measure this by player retention - despite the results we've mostly retained our target players under Benji, which is not historically a strong point of the club. He's basically lost Stefano, Galvin and Luai, the latter I think we were quite OK to see go.
My main concern is how Benji or his successor can build a team that competes for more than 12 rounds. And I'm at a loss because we've done it all with coaches - appointed great ex players (Benji, Terry Lamb, Junior, Potter), highly intelligent assistants (JT), established coaches with a track record (Ivan), hard-head disciplinarians (Madge).
We otherwise changed the CEO, the Board, the governance, built the COE. The only thing we haven't tried is jettison HBG and that's not an option.