The Shane Flanagan Influence

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Feel free to find, quote and correct anything you deem an exaggeration, that is what a forum is for. Opinions!

I personally dont think anything is fantastic atm. I think we have slightly improved on last year. There are encouraging signs amongst some very concerning ones.

Consistency and our mentality on the field a big worry.
I agree with all your points accept the one where you say we have slightly improved

I know stats dont tell the whole story but my perspective story is that I do not see your slight improvement

Last Season after 14 rounds we were 9th on the ladder with 7 wins
This season after 14 rounds we are 10th on the ladder with 5 wins
 
I agree with all your points accept the one where you say we have slightly improved

I know stats dont tell the whole story but my perspective story is that I do not see your slight improvement

Last Season after 14 rounds we were 9th on the ladder with 7 wins
This season after 14 rounds we are 10th on the ladder with 5 wins

Don't let truth get in the way of Disco trying to prove someone wrong mate to make it sound like everything is roses and cherry-blossoms. I told him we've won 5 of our last 19 games (since jersey-gate), with relatively the same roster (my point was recruitment has been sub-standard), and he pointed to a few rare games where every player was out injured.

We have a 30 man squad - and they are pretty well the same as last season FFS. These players were either development or top squad (25 players):

Aloiai
Boyle
Bullemor
CKT
DCE
Croker
Fainu
Fulton
Garrick
Harper
Keppie
Koula
Lawton
Olakau'atu
Parker
Paseka
Saab
Schuster
Sipley
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Vaega
Tuipulotu
Weekes

Here are the new players (that Disco says made us so much different) - 5 players

Arthur
Condon
Johns
Tuilagi
Woods

Who replaced Walker, Taupau, Foran, Davey, Taufua (which to me is a massive downgrade across the board).
 
Don't let truth get in the way of Disco trying to prove someone wrong mate to make it sound like everything is roses and cherry-blossoms. I told him we've won 5 of our last 19 games (since jersey-gate), with relatively the same roster (my point was recruitment has been sub-standard), and he pointed to a few rare games where every player was out injured.

We have a 30 man squad - and they are pretty well the same as last season FFS. These players were either development or top squad (25 players):

Aloiai
Boyle
Bullemor
CKT
DCE
Croker
Fainu
Fulton
Garrick
Harper
Keppie
Koula
Lawton
Olakau'atu
Parker
Paseka
Saab
Schuster
Sipley
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Vaega
Tuipulotu
Weekes

Here are the new players (that Disco says made us so much different) - 5 players

Arthur
Condon
Johns
Tuilagi
Woods

Who replaced Walker, Taupau, Foran, Davey, Taufua (which to me is a massive downgrade across the board).
Thanks for your passionate input @Ryan
Passionate Manly people like Manly winning and that is a good thing
Accepting Mediocrity is not a Manly thing
Mediocrity is the seed of Incompetence

I believe we have a very competitive roster
Our backline is dynamic
Turbo
Saab
Garrick
Koula
Vaega

Our haves are a combination of World class Winning experience in DCE and Brilliance in the Shu

Our Forwards are lead by three of the most dominant forwards in the game in Haumole , Paseka and Jurbo and the rest of the squad are capable NRL players that can compliment all those dominant players mentioned

Now I agree we are short few class player upgrades to win the Grand final
But our current squad is good enough to compete for a top 8 finals spot and anything less is an underachievement

You ask Who replaced Walker, Taupau, Foran, Davey, Taufua (which to me is a massive downgrade across the board). ?

No massive down grades here feathered friend
Taufua at end of his career would not make the end of our current back line
Taupau is no massive loss and players like Sipley are filling the role
Fainu is the future and not the Journey man Davey
The 2022 team with Foran and Walker did not make the top 8 so I can not see that they are a massive loss . Forans input has the Titans on 13th on the ladder
 
Don't let truth get in the way of Disco trying to prove someone wrong mate to make it sound like everything is roses and cherry-blossoms. I told him we've won 5 of our last 19 games (since jersey-gate), with relatively the same roster (my point was recruitment has been sub-standard), and he pointed to a few rare games where every player was out injured.

We have a 30 man squad - and they are pretty well the same as last season FFS. These players were either development or top squad (25 players):

Aloiai
Boyle
Bullemor
CKT
DCE
Croker
Fainu
Fulton
Garrick
Harper
Keppie
Koula
Lawton
Olakau'atu
Parker
Paseka
Saab
Schuster
Sipley
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Trbojevic
Vaega
Tuipulotu
Weekes

Here are the new players (that Disco says made us so much different) - 5 players

Arthur
Condon
Johns
Tuilagi
Woods

Who replaced Walker, Taupau, Foran, Davey, Taufua (which to me is a massive downgrade across the board).
Geeez you get worked up.

I said nothing of our squads, the discussion was around the team from the last 6 games of the season to this years.

The LAST 6 games.

It was NOT a commentary how good were are, bad we are, whether last years squad was the same, different, better, worse whatever.

It is simply a point that the last 6 games from last seaon are an outlier. A cluster$%#@ of events most of which were of our own doing.

So including those 6 games in anything misrepresents the data.

Also aren't you the same person that was talking about not playing the man?
 
Here are the new players (that Disco says made us so much different) - 5 players

Arthur
Condon
Johns
Tuilagi
Woods

Who replaced Walker, Taupau, Foran, Davey, Taufua (which to me is a massive downgrade across the board).

So.......is a downgrade not different so?
 
So.......is a downgrade not different so?
Mate, I don't want us to end up fighting over this or having a thing against each other. Yup, I do get too worked up - hand up.

I think you summarised it all up perfectly in your previous post.

There are some signs of improvement - i.e. the forwards seem very committed at times. But there are also some concerning trends.

I'm happy to leave it at that, too. I'm sorry for having a go at the way you support the team. Unfair of me. It's both our hobbies. I whinge when people tell me how to support the club, and here I am doing the same to you, which makes me a dickhead (and hypocritical), so I apologise. I don't want you thinking I'm wrecking your experience here mate, especially in this site.

Not gonna lie, I'm expecting a huge win this weekend..That in itself is a huge difference to the way I felt last season !

Hope we are good mate.
 
Mate, I don't want us to end up fighting over this or having a thing against each other. Yup, I do get too worked up - hand up.

I think you summarised it all up perfectly in your previous post.

There are some signs of improvement - i.e. the forwards seem very committed at times. But there are also some concerning trends.

I'm happy to leave it at that, too. I'm sorry for having a go at the way you support the team. Unfair of me. It's both our hobbies. I whinge when people tell me how to support the club, and here I am doing the same to you, which makes me a dickhead (and hypocritical), so I apologise. I don't want you thinking I'm wrecking your experience here mate, especially in this site.

Not gonna lie, I'm expecting a huge win this weekend..That in itself is a huge difference to the way I felt last season !

Hope we are good mate.
Of course we are good.

Don't anticipate ever having online beef
 
Seibold is right to want his assistants to be ambitious. The point he misses is that fans HATE hearing about players/coaches/staff being in talks to go elsewhere. So by all means give Flanno his blessing, but why they can’t just keep their mouth shut - or say the absolute minimum - I simply don’t know…
 
Someone might want to do that cheaty thing so others can read ....

 
Someone might want to do that cheaty thing so others can read ....

Haven't read that article, but if Saints were happy to have DeBelin captain the side recently they aren't going to have a problem using Flanagan as coach.
Personally I doubt he could do much over there anyway, the merger club's problems stem from other areas, not coaching.
 
Don’t know why he’d go to a basket case club he’s career would go backwards.

Erghh.

5 times the pay

He believes he can make a difference in being the head coach

The Dragons squad is not as bad as yhe results make out

He will be a head coach and not an assistant to a proven spoon coach.
 
Damn, I want to read it too.
Strap yourself in, mate. It's a lengthy piece.

OPINION​

Why Shane Flanagan must never coach in the NRL again​

by Darren Kane

Whatever disarray the Dragons might be in, Shane Flanagan is not the answer. As an issue of fundamental sports integrity, it’s inexplicable that there is any path to the Manly assistant and former Dragons employee returning to a head coaching role. He shouldn’t be a candidate.

If the St George Illawarra board guzzles enough of the Kool Aid to decide otherwise, the NRL must surely step in to save the club from the desperation of its own guiding minds.

In September 2019, the NRL announced that Flanagan - who by then was deregistered by the NRL and excluded from rugby league - would be eligible to be registered only as an assistant coach from the following season. Shortly after, the Dragons snapped up his services. He’s since gone to Manly, where by all reports he has added value.

The NRL’s statement concluded by saying Flanagan “has been told the NRL will give no consideration to expediting his return to a head coaching role beyond today’s decision”. And that’s where matters rest. Above the line, at least.

And that’s where matters should end. The reduction of any corresponding ban in racing or any other sport dependent on integrity to survive wouldn’t be entertained. If St George Illawarra do decide to sign Flanagan as the club’s next head coach, the governing body must veto the deal.
Here’s why.

Just before Christmas 2018, the NRL declared it intended to cancel Flanagan’s registration. The next month, Flanagan quit his position at Cronulla, not because he’d had enough time behind the clipboard but because being a registered person is a mandatory precondition to being employed as a head coach in the NRL.

Flanagan was deregistered after the NRL had earlier that year discovered he had intentionally and slyly ignored the conditions of a previous 12-month ban imposed on him by the NRL in 2013. That earlier sanction demanded Flanagan have nothing to do with the Sharks for the duration of the 2014 season.

Instead of respecting the sanction, Flanagan intentionally, repeatedly and flagrantly ignored it, giving the governing body an almighty “up yours” in the process. Years later, the NRL uncovered evidence of Flanagan’s behaviour and responded by deregistering him in 2018 before partially capitulating on that stance at the end of 2019.

It is also worth revisiting why Flanagan was suspended by the NRL in 2013 because this strikes right at the core responsibilities and obligations of a head coach in any professional sport.

In 2013 – a decade ago, although time shouldn’t deaden the actualities here - the NRL made serious and damning findings about the many failures of Flanagan, his Cronulla club and others. Those findings related to an organised, and yet pathetically amateurish, system of administering substances, supplements, snake oil and God-knows-what-else to hoodwinked Sharks footballers. All of this in dangerous circumstances, where the players were exposed to significant potential health dangers.

Regarding Flanagan particularly, the NRL’s investigation determined that he’d failed to ensure a safe and healthy work environment, that he’d failed to properly supervise his senior staff, that he’d failed to take appropriate action to combat actual unsafe medical and administration practices, and that he’d failed to ensure that his staff didn’t intentionally bypass the club’s medical staff. It’s difficult to conceive of failings any more elemental.

Given this, how can the Dragons even consider he is the best person to chart an uncertain on-field future? As a paid-up member of the St George faction, I’d be ashamed if the board opted for Shane Flanagan.

To illustrate what the NRL’s findings actually mean in context, one must turn to a judgment delivered in the Supreme Court of NSW in March 2016 in a defamation case brought by the disgraced pseudo-chemist Stephen Dank against a multitude of defendants, including me (I was the Sharks’ lawyer in relation to the “ASADA crisis”).

That judgment concerned six different defamation cases, all commenced by Dank in relation to the media’s reporting on his pivotal role in doping and duping innumerable Australian athletes and many others.

The court found that the various publications that Dank was suing conveyed specific imputations, including that Dank had administered drugs to players that were banned in sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency and that Dank administered dangerous and cancer-causing supplements to players. The court also found the material said Dank acted with reckless indifference to the life of one of those Sharks players, because he administered untested substances to that player while he was in remission from cancer and that Dank accelerated that player’s eventual death from that cancer.

Yet the jury then also determined that each of those imputations was substantially true. Let that resonate with you …

There hasn’t been a greater abhorrence in the history of sport in Australia than that orchestrated by Stephen Dank. The absolute disregard he displayed for the safety and welfare of athletes who placed their trust in him is breathtaking. And the particular head coach, under whose supposed supervision Dank infected the Sharks in 2010 and 2011, was Shane Flanagan. As a St George Illawarra director, how could you justify deciding to trust Flanagan now, even with the passage of time and whatever he may have done to rehabilitate and educate himself?

Almost all the time, almost all people deserve second chances. None of what I have said above should be interpreted as an attempted assassination of Flanagan. In one context, you can understand a desperate club seeking to engage him, he’s a premiership-winning performer after all.
But it would convey absolutely the wrong message on every level if the NRL relaxes the already quite lenient sanctions just because the Dragons see him as a solution to a coaching dilemma.

Darren Kane is a Sydney-based sports lawyer who represented Cronulla in 2013 in relation to the ASADA investigation.
 
Strap yourself in, mate. It's a lengthy piece.

OPINION​

Why Shane Flanagan must never coach in the NRL again​

by Darren Kane

Whatever disarray the Dragons might be in, Shane Flanagan is not the answer. As an issue of fundamental sports integrity, it’s inexplicable that there is any path to the Manly assistant and former Dragons employee returning to a head coaching role. He shouldn’t be a candidate.

If the St George Illawarra board guzzles enough of the Kool Aid to decide otherwise, the NRL must surely step in to save the club from the desperation of its own guiding minds.

In September 2019, the NRL announced that Flanagan - who by then was deregistered by the NRL and excluded from rugby league - would be eligible to be registered only as an assistant coach from the following season. Shortly after, the Dragons snapped up his services. He’s since gone to Manly, where by all reports he has added value.

The NRL’s statement concluded by saying Flanagan “has been told the NRL will give no consideration to expediting his return to a head coaching role beyond today’s decision”. And that’s where matters rest. Above the line, at least.

And that’s where matters should end. The reduction of any corresponding ban in racing or any other sport dependent on integrity to survive wouldn’t be entertained. If St George Illawarra do decide to sign Flanagan as the club’s next head coach, the governing body must veto the deal.
Here’s why.

Just before Christmas 2018, the NRL declared it intended to cancel Flanagan’s registration. The next month, Flanagan quit his position at Cronulla, not because he’d had enough time behind the clipboard but because being a registered person is a mandatory precondition to being employed as a head coach in the NRL.

Flanagan was deregistered after the NRL had earlier that year discovered he had intentionally and slyly ignored the conditions of a previous 12-month ban imposed on him by the NRL in 2013. That earlier sanction demanded Flanagan have nothing to do with the Sharks for the duration of the 2014 season.

Instead of respecting the sanction, Flanagan intentionally, repeatedly and flagrantly ignored it, giving the governing body an almighty “up yours” in the process. Years later, the NRL uncovered evidence of Flanagan’s behaviour and responded by deregistering him in 2018 before partially capitulating on that stance at the end of 2019.

It is also worth revisiting why Flanagan was suspended by the NRL in 2013 because this strikes right at the core responsibilities and obligations of a head coach in any professional sport.

In 2013 – a decade ago, although time shouldn’t deaden the actualities here - the NRL made serious and damning findings about the many failures of Flanagan, his Cronulla club and others. Those findings related to an organised, and yet pathetically amateurish, system of administering substances, supplements, snake oil and God-knows-what-else to hoodwinked Sharks footballers. All of this in dangerous circumstances, where the players were exposed to significant potential health dangers.

Regarding Flanagan particularly, the NRL’s investigation determined that he’d failed to ensure a safe and healthy work environment, that he’d failed to properly supervise his senior staff, that he’d failed to take appropriate action to combat actual unsafe medical and administration practices, and that he’d failed to ensure that his staff didn’t intentionally bypass the club’s medical staff. It’s difficult to conceive of failings any more elemental.

Given this, how can the Dragons even consider he is the best person to chart an uncertain on-field future? As a paid-up member of the St George faction, I’d be ashamed if the board opted for Shane Flanagan.

To illustrate what the NRL’s findings actually mean in context, one must turn to a judgment delivered in the Supreme Court of NSW in March 2016 in a defamation case brought by the disgraced pseudo-chemist Stephen Dank against a multitude of defendants, including me (I was the Sharks’ lawyer in relation to the “ASADA crisis”).

That judgment concerned six different defamation cases, all commenced by Dank in relation to the media’s reporting on his pivotal role in doping and duping innumerable Australian athletes and many others.

The court found that the various publications that Dank was suing conveyed specific imputations, including that Dank had administered drugs to players that were banned in sport by the World Anti-Doping Agency and that Dank administered dangerous and cancer-causing supplements to players. The court also found the material said Dank acted with reckless indifference to the life of one of those Sharks players, because he administered untested substances to that player while he was in remission from cancer and that Dank accelerated that player’s eventual death from that cancer.

Yet the jury then also determined that each of those imputations was substantially true. Let that resonate with you …

There hasn’t been a greater abhorrence in the history of sport in Australia than that orchestrated by Stephen Dank. The absolute disregard he displayed for the safety and welfare of athletes who placed their trust in him is breathtaking. And the particular head coach, under whose supposed supervision Dank infected the Sharks in 2010 and 2011, was Shane Flanagan. As a St George Illawarra director, how could you justify deciding to trust Flanagan now, even with the passage of time and whatever he may have done to rehabilitate and educate himself?

Almost all the time, almost all people deserve second chances. None of what I have said above should be interpreted as an attempted assassination of Flanagan. In one context, you can understand a desperate club seeking to engage him, he’s a premiership-winning performer after all.
But it would convey absolutely the wrong message on every level if the NRL relaxes the already quite lenient sanctions just because the Dragons see him as a solution to a coaching dilemma.

Darren Kane is a Sydney-based sports lawyer who represented Cronulla in 2013 in relation to the ASADA investigation.
So is Flanno registered to be head coach then?
 

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