Gerry Mander wrote:
Gilmour is one player who was let go too early that's the point.
Talau (and no replacement), Long, Sculthorpe and Joynt were all kept too long.
So there were other errors but gilmour is the only mistake of letting go too early
Ok got to differ there. If we let Long go any earlier, we would have had no organising and kicking half back. Eastmond was not ready and Leon was not pulling the weight either. I think we let Long go at the right time, but should have finalised with Eastmond before letting Long and Smith go.
We told long he could go and same for Smith, then tried to negotitate with Kyle. He was laughing all the way to the bank on that as we had shown our hand.
Sculthorpe, well we would not have won the WCC that year without him. Yes he was plagued by injury in those years, but no one can tell how a recovery can go. We could have easily sign Soliola never to see him play for injury. Fozzards return and the last year of cayless we got less than 10 games between them over those 2 years. So compared to that we kept Sculthorpe just long enough.
I don't recall thinking Joynt was kept too long, he was still effective when he left.
Out of those 3 you have a case with Sculthorpe but injuries are very hard to predict. Tommy God being a perfect example. He kept coming back and back from awful knee injuries.
