People just fail to understand the reality of last year. It is very easy to ignore some facts. The facts are Turbo, Walker and Fainu ... 3 of our spine - the spine we had trained all off season with... gone for the year. Tell me any team which can lose 3/4 of the spine and still be a high performing team? Fact 2 when Turbo and Walker are injured - we are 4 from 6 and had only just been pipped by the Storm and Eels in super tight games. Fact 3... injuries galore besides those three over the year. Fact 4... the game changed in an instant and became touch football - a fast pace, huge defensive load if you dont have the ball, need for a bit more mobility in the forwards. We had players like Jetski and Boyle... not really high mobility highly skilled forwards for the new age game and without two attacking guns in Walker and Turbo and the other injuries our roster couldn't cope. Fact 5 - our game was built on grind them into the dust - aggressive, hard hitting wear them down football especially without Turbo and Walker. Fact 6 the Manly game based on the 2019 model which was a success was not built around a fast paced game of touch which was evoked with no warning for 2020. Fact 7 - very true that without Turbo and our disappeared spine and our lack of success our confidence was destroyed which then carried over to some degree in 2021. Fact 8 the younger players everyone wanted to play had had absolutely no football in 2020 because of COVID. Des was rightly being cautious. Fact 9 Des is a loyal very loyal coach - you have to earn the right to play or you have to prove you are not up to the mark before Des moves on. Fact 10 - the first four weeks with the injuries did force Des' hand but I am guessing Des is not as clueless as some on here think and he understood the young talent he had. Was just a matter of time and injuries presented the opportunity. Fact 11..... the club very early on re-signed Haumole and Schu - two of the young talent to longer contracts proving they were always in his long term plans. So to me it is not hindsight at all. The deathriders all jumped on and it was disgusting and the majority of them have virtually disappeared. However as I said some still harp on about Des being lucky, he has no idea, injuries forced his hand bla bla bla. We all however were upset and disappointed and rightly so. I called for a heap of players to be let go at the end of the year.... players now I admit have proved me totally wrong. Some people were actively wanting us to lose to prove their points of the club being a debacle and Des needs to go... totally disgraceful. But what I never doubted - not once was that Des and the Club but especially Des was skilled enough, experienced enough, knowledgeable enough to lead us out of that mess and he has. No luck... he is a bloody good coach. What I didn't doubt was that I knew more than Des that I had insights that Des didn't and unlike many punters on here I knew that I was not a highly skilled and talented NRL coach and I was in fact a keyboard nufty and Des knew far more than I about his reasons and his approach. The simple reality.
