Robbie re-tweeted a message saying, "sad day for the Tigers, losing Gibbo is a disaster for the club on many fronts."
It is highly unusual that Robbie would go public with his feelings like this. 'a disaster for the club on many fronts.' One of those fronts would be the loss of Bryce's defence, but what are the others"
Sounds to me like he is referring to team/club harmony and loyalty. This Blair business seems to be tearing the team apart. Robbie's comment is surely aimed at management. He sounds very unhappy and this can't be good.
If this really is all coming from the signing of Blair, then I agree, it is a disaster.
If that's true then these blokes, including Farah, ought to man up and try being professionals. It doesn't matter what they're getting paid (personally I don't happen to believe NRL players earn too much, but that's another discussion) - the fact is they are professional footballers and have no right to be [automatically edited] and moaning about who their colleagues are. I've worked at places where my colleagues are my best mates and at others where I'm barely on polite terms with them, and at both I'm there because I'm getting paid to do my job as best I can. Sure it's great to work with people you get on with but that shouldn't affect your performance, and if it does you need to take a long look in the mirror.
If anything, my worry would be that the Tigers are too matey with each other. This season has shown that they certainly believe their own hype. If management has decided the squad needs to be freshened up a bit they certainly have the evidence on the field to back that up - and I include last season in that: for all the talk of how close we came the fact is we were only competing for "best of the rest" and the signs are that where a few clubs have taken another step up this season (Dragons, Manly, maybe Melbourne) we have stagnated or gone backwards. If Farah wanted to keep all his mates around him he should have tried winning some more games. You could make a decent case that we've only played well twice this season and on one of those occasions the oppo rolled over and died, and if that's the best the current squad can do then yes, I would agree that we need changes.
Incidentally, I'm aware I'm being very harsh here given injuries etc, and it is possible that the poor performances have to some extent been caused by uncertainty off the field. But the fact is that they shouldn't have. There are a bunch of players in this squad who must know the next couple of seasons are going to be their best chance of winning a comp, and to lose focus on that because one of your mates might be playing somewhere else next year is crap, quite frankly. I'm not normally one to either criticise players (except Beau Ryan) or to ascribe on-field results to "team harmony" (it's amazing how winning teams develop their own harmony) but on this occasion I really think it's the players' role to shut up and perform.
