Saddened! wrote:
The more I see Saints under brown, the more I'm convinced that he's very, very lucky we've had the injuries we have had this season. The reason? Because the more players we get back, the more clueless and inept we look. There is no gameplan, no set moves, no attacking structure at all. Having a few out has given him that excuse, that comfort blanket. If we had the full squad all season, he'd have been sacked by now.
Agreed
St pete wrote:
The squad is one of the worst I've ever seen. Its quicker to name the players I rate than the ones I don't.
No.
We need to stop making f*&%ing excuses for Brown. There were a lot of very good, very experienced individual players on that pitch tonight. A lot of internationals. A lot of NRL experience. Players who have won a lot of silverware between them. Yet there is a collective loss of form which can only be explained through poor coaching. Individuals lose form occasionally, but when a whole team does, you have to look at the coach.
Soliola, Puletua, Roby, Walmsley, Manu, Turner, Meli, Wilkin, Wellens, LMS. These are not bad players, yet none of them are even approaching form. Laffranchi's form has collapsed under Brown, while I'm excluding Perry as a lost cause whose performance can't be laid at Brown's door. Even if you subscribed to the view that Hohaia has lost all ability since he won the world cup with NZ, and Wellens is past it, then that still leaves a bunch of players who would slot pretty quickly into most sides in SL.
More to the point, even a team of journeymen can be coached to move up quickly in the defensive line, work from marker and show some f#*^ing aggression. Yet our lot play like wet tea-towels for 70 minutes of every game, looking as if they're scared of tackling and already beaten before they leave the dressing room.
That's the coaching. I managed to coach my schoolgirls' team to do some attacking moves, for Christ's sake, yet tonight we had players just standing and passing to whoever was nearest, ten metres out from the opponents' line - they were clueless.
That's the coaching.
There were parts of that performance which were nothing short of disgraceful. Injuries didn't leave us incapable of finding an overlap. Our injured players didn't fail to move up as a line, or drift effectively to cover moves out wide. Our medical room didn't look like it had never seena ball before whenever an attacking opportunity presented itself.
The blokes out there are highly-skilled professionals who could, and should, be doing a much better job than they are. They are collectively failing, and failing badly. The win against Leeds - which had more to do with their terrible play after hitting a big early lead than anything we did - disguised the fact that Saints have utterly collapsed. They look clueless in attack and useless in defence. Their attitude stinks, and pretty much every individual is playing well below the level at which they can play, and have played before.
Brown is responsible for that. We need to stop making f*£#ing excuses and kick the useless Aussie wage-stealer out if he can't turn this around immediately.
