morrisseyisawire wrote:
The issue is, we seem to have no concept of forward planning or contingency planning and this filters through every aspect of the club.
When TS left the appearance was of a hastily convened trip to Oz to interview a motley bunch of randoms and ended up with Price.
Agreed, but remember the popular view on this forum at the time was that TS had reached the end of the road and anybody would be better than TS. I think Price has basically been as close to continuation of the later TS years as we could get. We didn't go backwards (which is an underestimated risk when changing coach) but we didn't go forwards. The pattern has been 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. So the idea that anybody would be better than TS was proven wrong, and just ditching Price now and playing coach roulette risks the same - or worse, hiring someone who takes us backwards.
I feel the same about Price now as I did about Cullen at the end of 2006. We know what we have got. We're likely to be around the same level as long as this goes on. We had a similar situation if I remember with Cullen going into a contract year in 2007 and I remember always having the feeling that the board liked Cullen and wanted to find an excuse to extend him - which they did when we had a bit of a good run - but that was a mistake, and even Cullen himself said on the Woody and Higham show that with hindsight he shouldn't have signed that extension. I don't think the board is as wedded to Price as it was to Cullen but there is a risk that if we jump to extend him after a few wins, we will just be where we were at the end of Cullen, going into a wilderness period where we can't move forward until we have the right appointment.
Although Lowes didn't work out as Cullen's replacement, the board was at least thinking ahead when it saw TS was going to be available after the 2008 world cup, and had him in mind as the long term replacement. I think the same approach is called for now. Find a guy who is really good - Wane, McDermott, one of the top Aussies - see when they are available. Rather than extend Price, give Anderson or Henderson a shot in the interim.
Paul Anderson did well in his previous head coaching job - he won the minor Premiership with Huddersfield - and was sacked prematurely as Huddersfield's fortunes afterwards showed. Imagine how we would feel if say Anderson went to Cas to replace Powell and had them back on top of the league like he did Hudds. We would be asking hard questions of the board saying how did we miss this guy on our doorstep.
So I would say take a long view - start lining up which of the real elite coaches is coming available in 2022, 2023, 2024 etc. Give Anderson a crack at Wire in the meantime. If Anderson takes us to GF winning level then we have our answer, if not, then pivot to the big gun down the line.
