@Russell said in [The truth](/post/1037911) said:
@jirskyr said in [The truth](/post/1037054) said:
The unfortunate truth is that Cleary got essentially the same roster to 12-12 in 25 rounds and it appears Madge is unlikely to match that.
Meanwhile Cleary's new team are 9-8 with 7 matches in hand, likely to better 12 wins.
Madge might be a better overall coach but Cleary is getting superior results.
With a superior playing roster eh!
Firstly, I don't think you can compare this season to last season - it looks tighter between 6th and 13th this year with only 2 wins separating 8 teams. Also many of the teams in that group playing for 6th, 7th and 8th are tough competition with quality rosters, expected to be in the top 8 such as Panthers, Broncos, Sharks. Then there's the Cowboys and Knights who also both have quality rosters but are playing inconsistently.
Our team is virtually the same, but I think we have played better football than last year in the most part. Last year we started with some momentum and played off some energy and fight that saw us win tight games early on against top teams that hadn't quite hit their straps. Those wins were great, but we didn't really have much attack and once the high effort levels plateaued we couldn't maintain anything and were pretty ordinary for the rest.
Secondly, I don't even consider Cleary as a fair dinkum coach for us worth comparing - the more time goes on the more I see how much his choices have hurt us long term. I'd have Madge over him any day!!
The biggest problem is roster - we simply lack quality hungry players in many areas - every one of our pack would struggle to make it into most of the NRL teams 17 (apart from Matterson perhaps). Honestly most of our backs would as well. We have no real strike players or hard young beasty forwards who can break the ad line - and when you couple this with a lack of desire to step up and fight at 100% for 80 mins - well you get what we see!
As for Cleary's results with the Panthers - they have looked pretty poor up until the last 3-4 weeks and are only finally starting to play as well as they should be. He's no great coach in my opinion, and furthermore after our experience with him, I wouldn't have him if he was the last coach on Earth!
