The biggest pointer for mine that Barrett really had no idea as a coach is to look at Turbo.
Last year he was often defending in the line, especially when we were defending the goal line. And with no fullback in play a lot of the time because he was in the line making tackles, opposition teams often threw a couple of long passes and then put through something like a grubber. And if they scored from that, Tom would cop an absolute hammering because of his poor positioning at the back, which happened a lot.
Fast forward 12 months and Tom no longer defends in the line unless he absolutely has to. With Snake's influence, something that would not have happened if Barrett was still coaching, he now patrols behind the line as well as points the defenders where to go. And to that end not only has the teams defence seen a marked improvement, but so has Tom's positioning at the back.
Everyone who saw him knew a long time ago that Tom was an attacking weapon. But now with Des back using obviously different tactics, and with Snake back in the fold teaching him the finer points, he has become a lot more complete player. I also think having someone like Donny has also helped. Whereas under Ferris The Fraud, Tom would struggle to run out games, now he gets through them easily because not only is he a lot fitter, but he's smarter in when to run etc and not burning up so much gas (part of that problem, especially last year, was that not only was he defending in the line, but because we played basically without a 5/8, he was often playing as an extra half and doing a lot more work).
And to think, at the start of this year there was a lot of speculation that if Barrett ended up at another club that the Trbojevic's would join him there because they were "loyal" to him. Now they aren't likely to go anywhere (provided we come up with the money for them).