**The Tigers need to consider sacking Jason Taylor**
James Preston Roar Pro - By James Preston, 29 Jun 2015 James Preston is a Roar Pro
I have written several times since Taylor’s appointment last year that he is not the right man to lead the Wests Tigers into a golden new age.
I am acutely aware that as a club the Tigers do need stability and on the surface the last thing they need is a fourth coach in five seasons. But more importantly there is no point persisting with a coach for a further two years simply for the sake of stability.
The Tigers need to admit that they got it wrong and start again. The coaching direction offered to this young group of players over the next 24 months is going to be pivotal to how their careers progress in the long run and that is too important to place into the wrong hands.
For months now Taylor has been skating on thin ice but Sunday’s match against the Panthers must surely be the breaking point for many fans. The game highlighted that Taylor is not an NRL standard coach.
The decision to place a lumbering inexperienced second rower in the form of Kyle Lovett into the centres as cover for the injured Tim Simona, and then watch for 50 minutes as Dean Whare and David Simmons run rampant around him, was completely and utterly inept.
No less than four tries were scored through Lovett’s avenue during his tenure in the centres, including a hat trick to Simmons as time and again Lovett was out paced and poorly positioned.
In isolation that sounds like a personal problem for Lovett, but the key factor here is that playing in this side – the whole 80 minutes for that matter – was former Australian Test left centre Chris Lawrence.
Taylor, in his infinite wisdom, decided that playing a representative centre in a role that he has filled for nine previous seasons was somehow not an option. His excuse in the press conference after the game was just laughable.
"Chris has been doing so well at second row, we felt we had to keep him there as he has just gotten comfortable,” he said.
There are three big problems with this explanation.
Firstly, as mentioned Lawrence is a representative centre, Lovett is a fringe first grade second rower and has been shifted savagely out of position to cover for Simona. One would imagine it to be an uncomfortable situation for Lovett, but no matter because Lawrence was “comfortable”. OK than.
Secondly, Taylor has continuously hammered home his philosophy about defence being his key focus. Simona left the field in the 21st minute. In the 23rd minute the Panthers offered their first left-to-right back line shift of the afternoon – Whare stood up Lovett, squeezed between him and Pat Richards, and popped a ball to Simmons who then found Peter Wallace on the inside for a try.
Two minutes is all it took to prove that there was going to be serious problems with the Tigers’ defensive structure if Lovett remained at left centre. Anyone with half a brain could see that.
Thirdly, the primary role of a coach is to offer a tactical approach by analysing the game in front of them and making changes were necessary in order to attain a winning result. Taylor took 24 points and 51 minutes to identify this issue.
By this point in time the game was gone.
The fact that during his press conference he stated: “people are going to blame that decision for the loss, that is not why we lost” actually serves the exact contradictory purpose. He has self-assigned guilt in the most cowardly of ways.
Being a poor coach is one thing, but not being able to own up to your mistakes when offered the opportunity is a whole other thing. It highlights the lack of leadership Taylor exhibits.
A man with no accountability is not one who can be followed.
Now the reason I am fixating upon the Lovett issue in this article is because it so poignantly highlights Taylor’s deficiencies as a first grade coach. Every single commentator on Channel Nine and the 2GB radio broadcast pointed out several times how problematic this positional decision was.
A quick scroll through Facebook informs me that 99 per cent of the armchair coaches would create more confidence in their decisions than Taylor.
I will again iterate, the key role of a coach on match day is to assess the current climate of the game and make changes accordingly.
It is again worth mentioning that his use of the interchange bench has bordered on criminal by consistently removing Aaron Woods and Martin Taupau (and often also Keith Galloway) from the field all at the same time. He has watched every week as his team lose the ascendancy and the game in the ensuing 20-minute rotation.
Taylor has strangled the life out of this team by turning potentially the most exciting roster in the competition into a boring ineffectual slug fest. Even their captain who bleeds black and gold seems as inspired as a Nickelback song.
The Lovett issue ultimately acts as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Forget rehearsed plays, mental preparation, culture building or improving the Wests Tigers from a brand standpoint, the man presently at the helm fails to even get the fundamentals right. Without a foundation it is impossible to build.
