Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 3:30 pm  

The problems started around 2007. The big stars was getting older and the club stopped recruiting. I was shot down many times over the years when I was suggesting bad times are on the way.

The club called it "going with youth" but I called it "doing it on the cheap". The worst things that was happening was our run of grand final appearances as it was hiding the problems.

Even when your winning trophies and was as successful as we was, you still need to build and recruit and we didnt.

The club for whatever reason lost ambition.

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:08 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

Nonsense, plain and simple.

Long: replaced by Eastmond, the best and most sought after young half talent in the country by a mile. We couldn't possibly have found a better replacement. RU luchre and a little naivety on our part has left us with a mess subsequently but you can't argue we didn't produce a good enough replacement for Long.
Lyon: replaced with Aussie legend Gidley (who was at least as good for us as Lyon for a time until age overtook him) and then current first-choice GB centre Shenton. I can't see how anyone could argue about the ambition or suitability involved in signing those 2 players as successive replacements for Lyon.
Graham: replaced with 2 Aussie international props. Again: how could we have signed any more suitably or ambitiously?
Pryce: He was replaced with a world cup winning pivot on big money. Ambition there by the bucket load. No sense, but plenty of ambition.

Every player we have lost in the last decade has been replaced by the best practically available replacement at the time. Too many of them haven't worked out it's true, but that's life. Replacing the likes of Lyon, Scully, Long, KC etc. 100% like-for-like quality-for-quality is completely impossible in the current climate and we've done as good a job at the time as was practical.

This revisionist nonsense about us constantly losing players and never replacing them with suitable quality needs to be smacked squarely in the mush once and for all.

FWIW, I tend to agree with you.

Lafranchi appeared to have the hallmarks of one of those big SR's who would successfully make the transition to prop. Given his build, playing style and [lack of] speed, I couldn't really imagine him as a modern second rower anyway.

Hohaia could have been a revelation at stand off. He had the pedigree and *some* experience of playing there. As it happens, he's a revulsion.

(oh, and wasn't Wilkin always going to be the long-term successor to Scully?)

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:34 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

Nonsense, plain and simple.

Long: replaced by Eastmond, the best and most sought after young half talent in the country by a mile. We couldn't possibly have found a better replacement. RU luchre and a little naivety on our part has left us with a mess subsequently but you can't argue we didn't produce a good enough replacement for Long.
Lyon: replaced with Aussie legend Gidley (who was at least as good for us as Lyon for a time until age overtook him) and then current first-choice GB centre Shenton. I can't see how anyone could argue about the ambition or suitability involved in signing those 2 players as successive replacements for Lyon.
Graham: replaced with 2 Aussie international props. Again: how could we have signed any more suitably or ambitiously?
Pryce: He was replaced with a world cup winning pivot on big money. Ambition there by the bucket load. No sense, but plenty of ambition.

Every player we have lost in the last decade has been replaced by the best practically available replacement at the time. Too many of them haven't worked out it's true, but that's life. Replacing the likes of Lyon, Scully, Long, KC etc. 100% like-for-like quality-for-quality is completely impossible in the current climate and we've done as good a job at the time as was practical.

This revisionist nonsense about us constantly losing players and never replacing them with suitable quality needs to be smacked squarely in the mush once and for all.

I find your argument reasonably convincing. I remember the very positive reactions to signing Perry and Hohaia, and the optimism surrounding Eastmond. We're all in danger of putting on 20-20 hindsight glasses.

However, while I agree that the issue is that so many of our signings have failed to perform, that does then rather beg the question : why ? When Perry, Laffranchi, Hohaia and Shenton all fail to cut the nustard, plus an obvious drop-off in form from the likes of Puletua, LMS, Wilkin & Wellens, then you have to start to look for something systemic which has gone wrong at Saints. Whether it's the coaching, the conditioning, the incentive structure, or the culture at the club, there's something wrong when so many potentially top-class players end up being poor and/or injured at the same time.

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:50 pm  

No1 Saint wrote:

There are a few holes in your argument I'm afraid.

1. Gidley was never as good as Lyon , at least not for us and Shenton is worse than both. I understand though that replacing Lyon was near impossible. You have forgotten though that we let Talau go and didnt both to replace him until we sign Soliola who is more of a backrow. Impossible situation for right centre , unfathomable call not to replace a left centre with nobody coming through in the youth to fill either

2. The Ea$tmond scenario is pretty much down to p!ss poor planning, look at the Goons getting cash for Mossop because they saw his contract wnding down , established he wasnt going to sign another then did the smart thing by offloading him and they can now plan a replacement. Poor planning by the club

3. Graham - Perry was signed to play alongside Jammer so is hardly a replacement as was LMS. I accept Perry should have been far better than he has been so nothing we could do about that but Lafranchi (sp) who we did sign as a replacement is a second row convert and never a top class prop in a million years. We replaced one of the top props in the world with an old aussie second row ... hmmm. a gargantuan downgrade

4. Pryce - we replaced him with a bloke who had never been a first choice halfback in his senior career and had won a world cup playing fullback. A massive downgrade

The quality in general of the squad has been slipping downhill for years and is made worse by our dreadful recruitment.

p.s. I've not even mentioned the fact Scully retired and we never even tried to replace him

...and as always we hit the uncomfortable question of who, without the benefit of hindsight and a time machine, you think would have been better signings for us to replace them all at the time... It would have been hilarious reading on here if Eastmond had gone to Warrington on a long deal and we'd been stuck with Smith instead for instance wouldn't it?

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:55 pm  

I'm with Northampton Saint in most of what he says. Perry and Shenton were good signings on paper and Eastmond was a more than capable replacement for Long (although we didn't really prepare for his departure despite all the signs that it was coming). I think everyone was happy with those signings at the time. Add to that the signings of Soliola and Manu and we've done some ostensibly good business over recent years - we've just been a bit unlucky in a couple of cases.

However, I think it's clear that Hohaia and Laffranchi are where we went wrong. I had my doubts about signing Hohaia as a half-back, on a four year deal, when he'd never played there professionally before, and some others on here did too. Similarly, I thought we were getting a good player in Laffranchi, but there was always the concern that we were replacing a world class prop in Graham with a toiling second rower. Again, plenty of people commented about this at the time. What's most significant is that they are both non-fed players, and since signing them we've been severely restricted in what we are able to do. Had we hung on a bit and waited for the right people to turn up (i.e. a real scrum half and a real prop) we'd have been far better off. We might even have been able to pick up domestic signings, which would have left us room to strengthen other areas with overseas players. As it is we completely tied our hands.

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:57 pm  

Roy Haggerty wrote:

I find your argument reasonably convincing. I remember the very positive reactions to signing Perry and Hohaia, and the optimism surrounding Eastmond. We're all in danger of putting on 20-20 hindsight glasses.

However, while I agree that the issue is that so many of our signings have failed to perform, that does then rather beg the question : why ? When Perry, Laffranchi, Hohaia and Shenton all fail to cut the nustard, plus an obvious drop-off in form from the likes of Puletua, LMS, Wilkin & Wellens, then you have to start to look for something systemic which has gone wrong at Saints. Whether it's the coaching, the conditioning, the incentive structure, or the culture at the club, there's something wrong when so many potentially top-class players end up being poor and/or injured at the same time.

TP and Wello are old and so will inevitably decline, LMS has been about the same the whole time he's been here, Wilkin has had several serious injuries and has had to play 3 positions at the same time for most of the last couple of seasons etc. etc.

Noone's denying we've not got problems - we didn't have a top coach for 4 seasons (with jury still out on Brown) which is always going to take time to turn 'round, and our injury stuation has been consistently horrific for years (something must now be done about this as there must be something endemic in our conditioning causing a great deal of it). But the end of the world stuff is kneejerk and tiresome. We need a half (preferably 2) and a prop and some decent coaching and conditioning - that's it. Hardly a massive crisis....

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 5:06 pm  

Dux wrote:

I'm with Northampton Saint in most of what he says. Perry and Shenton were good signings on paper and Eastmond was a more than capable replacement for Long (although we didn't really prepare for his departure despite all the signs that it was coming). I think everyone was happy with those signings at the time. Add to that the signings of Soliola and Manu and we've done some ostensibly good business over recent years - we've just been a bit unlucky in a couple of cases.

However, I think it's clear that Hohaia and Laffranchi are where we went wrong. I had my doubts about signing Hohaia as a half-back, on a four year deal, when he'd never played there professionally before, and some others on here did too. Similarly, I thought we were getting a good player in Laffranchi, but there was always the concern that we were replacing a world class prop in Graham with a toiling second rower. Again, plenty of people commented about this at the time. What's most significant is that they are both non-fed players, and since signing them we've been severely restricted in what we are able to do. Had we hung on a bit and waited for the right people to turn up (i.e. a real scrum half and a real prop) we'd have been far better off. We might even have been able to pick up domestic signings, which would have left us room to strengthen other areas with overseas players. As it is we completely tied our hands.

No arguments from me - Hohaia always looked iffy to me and LeFrank ain't really been the replacement for Graham we needed either. But again: who else (assuming we needed to offload Pryce) could we have had any better at the time? Could you imagine being a member of the Saints board 2 years ago knowing you were about to lose both of your starting halves at the end of the season with only unknown kids available to replace them for an entire year? They had to sign someone and so panicked and signed the only vaguely quality player on the market right then that could play #6. They made a **** decision, but under the circumstances and without the benefit of hindsight I doubt many of us would have made a different one. C'est la vie.

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 5:21 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

...and as always we hit the uncomfortable question of who, without the benefit of hindsight and a time machine, you think would have been better signings for us to replace them all at the time... It would have been hilarious reading on here if Eastmond had gone to Warrington on a long deal and we'd been stuck with Smith instead for instance wouldn't it?

People would have been angry yes but I for one would have understood if the chairman would have simply been honest and said we sold him because he wouldnt sign a long contract and we didnt want to lose him on a free. It's a reality of the post bosman era and effects all the big football clubs so why should we be any different?

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 5:35 pm  

Dux wrote:

I'm with Northampton Saint in most of what he says. Perry and Shenton were good signings on paper and Eastmond was a more than capable replacement for Long (although we didn't really prepare for his departure despite all the signs that it was coming). I think everyone was happy with those signings at the time. Add to that the signings of Soliola and Manu and we've done some ostensibly good business over recent years - we've just been a bit unlucky in a couple of cases.

However, I think it's clear that Hohaia and Laffranchi are where we went wrong. I had my doubts about signing Hohaia as a half-back, on a four year deal, when he'd never played there professionally before, and some others on here did too. Similarly, I thought we were getting a good player in Laffranchi, but there was always the concern that we were replacing a world class prop in Graham with a toiling second rower. Again, plenty of people commented about this at the time. What's most significant is that they are both non-fed players, and since signing them we've been severely restricted in what we are able to do. Had we hung on a bit and waited for the right people to turn up (i.e. a real scrum half and a real prop) we'd have been far better off. We might even have been able to pick up domestic signings, which would have left us room to strengthen other areas with overseas players. As it is we completely tied our hands.

The problem with the recruitment and my biggest gripe, is not replacing players with quality when players left. We've gone about 6/7 years without a out and out centre pairing which IMO is shocking!

We failed to try and replace the the likes of gidley, scully, graham, long etc who was massively important to us. I know we could never replace scully, longy and KC with equal or better players but we should have gone for the best we could.

McManus said "we are going with youth" but what he really means is we are doing it cheap and hope we drop lucky. I wouldn't mind if he'd been honest and cane out and told us that we are doing it on the cheap because of the stadium but he didnt, in fact he told us "we will have a team to grace the stadium"

Re: Where did it all go wrong and how long ago? : Tue Apr 23, 2013 7:12 pm  

I pretty much agree with Northampton Saints comments re signings etc

I would also add that i think that although Daniel Anderson and Mick Potter were fine coaches, they were from the Brian Smith school of coaching.

This is a school that trumps size and power above speed, agility and footballing brain.

The ultimate result of this has been seen in Saints fans complaints about dour one up rugby, all bash and barge and no pace in the backs. Daniel Anderson escaped much criticism, as the team under him were near invincible. However a look back on websites and you will see pockets of fans bemoaning the spectacle.

Royce was then brought in to change things. I think he was trying to do that, bt for whatever reason the players didnt seem to understand or agree with what he was trying to do. The end result was player power allegedly saw him off.

We now have Brown, and we have seen at Huddersfield that he likes three quarters with pace, he likes to have a half back with a strong kicking game. He likes a creative loose forward. He likes mobile hookers and he also likes a big aggressive pack.
Given time i think Brown will build us a team in the mould that Saints fans desire. Whether he is a coach good enough to bring us trophys however is another matter. His record in Australia was solid rather than inspirational.