What the hell are you on about?
In fairness I can see what his point is:
No pressure on Benji. He knows he will be coaching in 2025.
No change, were just funnelling people in. 2023 was the same as 2024. Defense was critically lacking and we had people who were up for contract renewal!
Who left:
Papalii
Tuopu
Stefano
People who could leave. Other then Api, no one earned their spot on the team. But arguably, some of those above we would have wanted to keep.
We need to be in a position where people want to play for us AND earn their contract spots. Where they will try hard, nay try harder* to put on a tigers jersey. To get there we need:
A long term 3-5 year plan.
A training schedule that will get people up to first grade standard.
The ability to drop non-performing players.
Benji isn't the person to do this.
Tim Sheens wasn't the 'head coach' to identify where the Tigers had to move too to get out of our situation. As coach he tried speedball with a very squad, which failed.
Benji is in too deep too soon. I hope we can send him to Super-league and get anyone else in to take the next 2-3 years. Lets see if the board cna make this hard call.
*Does trying harder work? Or do we need to try Smarter... From what I read, tasks that require brute force will benefit from more effort. I.e. our forwards could use a rocket. Tasks like Halfback where you need calm, timing and focus are try smarter tasks. Too much pressure on a playmaker and you get what happened to Luke Brooks or Mitchell Pearce, a guy who tries his guts out but does nothing. It's a fine balance that Wayne Bennett gets but Bellamy goes the work harder route.