Walter Perolta
Reserve Grader
It was strange what happened with brett, he definitely deserved better.. fk barrett!If I am right, I don't think Barrett would be high on Snake's Christmas card list. Brett still felt he had more to give, but Barrett believed he was done and his last game was against the Cows in Townsville in Rd.16 of 2016. And it was a bit of a late decision to drop him because in our next game against St Merge at Brookie, Tom played fullback in the #3 jumper.
Unlike with Barrett though, Turbo and Snake never had a falling out. Brett was mentoring Tom because he knew that he would eventually have to pass the baton so to speak, and Turbo looked up to him. And while Tom did benefit in a way because it gave him his chance at fullback, truth be told he probably would have been just as happy staying on the wing or in the centres for the duration of the season with Snake at the back.
After the career he had with Manly, Snake did not deserve to go out like he did, basically being dropped by a rookie coach and being told his career was done. At the very least he deserved one last game at Brookvale in front of the fans who had supported him through thick and thin. I'm glad he came back for that lap of honour last year, but he deserved to do that lap at the end of his last game at the ground that he ruled for 14 years.
In a lot of ways, Turbo has been lucky because so far in his career he has really been under the wing of not only the two best fullbacks of their era by a LONG way, but arguably two of the greatest ever. He had Snake when he first started in first grade at Manly, and appears will have him again, while he also learned from Billy Slater when he made it into last years World Cup squad (despite what we might think about Slater and his grub tactics at times, he was a great fullback).
Tommy will goto another level with a real coach like des and now with snake helping out. His positional play will improve and i expect to see him bob up on the right side more often and less of his running out of dummy half then running sideways. Exciting times ahead