While it’s true Benji is inexperienced as a coach and clearly in a dilemma over what to do to motivate his players that have clearly become uninterested in putting in maximum effort for the Wests Tigers jersey, it is true what Andrew Johns stated on the Sunday Footy Shiw this morning, it’s not up to Benji to apologise to the fans, the players should be ashamed of their effort on Friday night and simply have to take a bit of pride in their performance and have a go.
I’m my opinion there is probably half a team that can be exempt from this criticism.
Two players I would like to highlight are Samuela Fainu. I watched him try his backside off, running the ball hard, tackling hard and generally leading our effort areas. As the game wore on I can only imagine how disheartening it was for him to see many team mates not showing any effort of care and I strongly believe this was a key factor on him eventually missing g a couple of crucial tackles that led to tries conceded, I definitely do not believe it was any lack of effort on his behalf.
The other player that often cops unwarranted criticism is Charlie Staines. Sure he was ineffective, but tell me what player could have done much better in his position. Like always he was never provided any quality ball, he was always the first to put his hand up and take the tough carries out of our danger zone, none of his carries were half hearted and why wasn’t someone else in our back 5 sharing the load ? That aside he didn’t miss a tackle and similar to Bula was given no opportunity to shine in attack.
