A few things come to mind:
- Fitzy lost a bit of influence and with the injuries the team slipped into old way of things (although it still feels much improved)
- No influence lost but other teams figured out our attack but we did not have enought time to develop alternative plans - hence the perceived stalling
- First year coach, new(ish) team and cultural change = expect ups and downs, it takes time for things to settle and become "muscle memory"
- Injuries led to ruck being lost which leads to possession loss which leads to defending more (with a smaller/smaller minute forward pack). It will take time to develop depth but there is light at the end of the tunnel (Hazelton, etc.)
What do you think?
We’ll keep getting better under Fitz but if we haven’t been seeing his influence in the middle third of season maybe he deserves criticism? Bomber and Hannay were never immune, but didn’t come with hype.
There’s probably an element of 2.
New coach and rookie halfback we probably haven’t gone into as deep strategising and different options as we will develop.
3 yes, takes time for team and coach to adapt to each other. But also let’s not forget the NRL is a damn tough comp, you don’t become Penrith or Storm over an offseason regardless of how good your new rookie coach is. That element probably unavoidable.
4 Ive been quite vocal I think has hindered us. Show me a team doing well missing both starting props?
Hopefully Dale stays back in side now.
Eels had RCG & Paulo looking tired last weekend and just got rolled by dogs. Not the only thing you could criticise but it wouldn’t have helped.
How often when a team is going well do you hear about one of the big elements of being a prem threat is to still win your bad games, or ‘they find a way to win’. Penrith and storm have bad games too but more often than not find a way to win. We aren’t at that level yet and lack that killer instinct. Capacity for this stalled because how can you be one of the killer teams playing under cap as we were, and we had some guys who for whatever reason dropped off hard last season too.
I guess I don’t think bad things are because we haven’t had Fitz very long but rather I think we can get better the longer we have him…