Yeah, I've said throughout the year that everything evens out over an NRL season and we'd finish where we deserved to finish: 9 wins, 15 losses and a points differential of -105. Maths has never been my strong point, but no amount of variables can make that look good.
I think it's also important to realise that this was always how the season was going to end for this team. No matter which side of the issue you come down on, it's easy to blame the jersey fiasco for "derailing" Manly's season, but the truth is, if we were a strong, united club, with players, coaches, management and owners all pulling in the one direction, one way or another we would have never faced such manufactured outrage and drama in the first place, or, once we did, we would have dealt with it effectively and moved on. We would have started to play footy again. We never did.
Could we have won more games if refereeing calls and injuries had gone our way? Of course. But once we found ourselves in the position of having to pull together and win consistently, it just wasn't in us. Could we have beaten the Roosters if the Not-so Magnificent 7 had played? Maybe, but probably not. The ones who were fit played the following week and we couldn't beat the Eels. Or the Titans after that. Or Canberra. Or the Bulldogs. The idea that we were just going to keep on winning, in a season where we'd already shown we weren't capable of doing that, is laughable.
We were a middling, inconsistent team before the jersey debacle and we remained a middling, inconsistent team after it.
If there are fractures in the playing group (and from the outside looking in, it sure looks that way), then they were there before anybody asked any of them to wear a slightly more colourful jersey. Those fractures were not created by the club's marketing department. They did not wave their woke leftist magic wand and turn the playing group into a factionalised, poorly-coached, unfit rabble overnight.
Winning has a way of papering over cracks and structural defects. The only positive of not winning, which we have turned into an art form both on and off the field, is that those cracks and structural defects are there for everyone to see. What we need now is accountability, from the players right up to the owners. We need to stop making the hole we've dug for ourselves deeper than it already is and start looking for a way out.
