I don’t think we’ll go backwards. Our new signings were enough (just) to miss the spoon this year and will likely be the difference again next.
We are a few players short of a good year past that though currently.
This squad is good for one thing…ad lib footy, due to the high skill level of a lot of players.
They are capable of good games against top competition, but backing that up week after week, month after month is a biridge too far.
We need to clean out our depth and sign first graders that can push our fringes back to KOE.
Then we need to focus on coaching. If Benji is to remain as head, then all his minions need the boot.
We are heading in the right direction, but it’s at a snails pace.
Yeah, I get the hope from everyone but as much progress as we've had, we're still a long way from good. It's just not good enough playing competitive losses and it's a long way to convert that to winning. So many say, 'if only we'd won a few of those narrow games', but we're losing them because we lack mental strength and we play soft defensively when we need to do the opposite. We're a long way from it.
You start being positive when you start getting wins. Maybe the wins aren't flashy, there's bad spells in games, too many errors...but the team wins more than they lose.
Even our good run at the back end was 2 good wins and then leading at Leichhardt against a lower rank team and we find a way to lose. And now we've lost two in a row. Will we win at the gold coast or finish with three losses on the trot?
All that said, our best efforts by far was yesterday against Canberra. We bashed them, we had three in the tackle, we put them on their backs and we laughed at them. We've done that in spells against recent opponents, but it was really good yesterday. If we can be that team that other teams hate and that you know you're going gets bashed by, then we have a footy team.
We've all had this sort of hope before. I agree with tucker that there's still a lot to prove. I'll finish by saying that I was wrong about Benji as coach. Whether he succeeds next year or not, he's brought a transformative recruitment drive and energy that has made our club better. For the first time since Sheens we have a coach that has improved our squad and is appealing to players. I wanted Des Hasler and I think I was wrong about all that. I hope Benji can now do the impossible and make us good.