I feel like defence has more to do with effort than structure. Doesn't matter how good the structure is if the guys are putting in no effort.
And also fitness... you make worse decisions under fatigue, you have quicker linespeed if you're fresher, etc.
Seasons are built during the preseason and from the outside in it looked like Patty and Haas were basically the only ones that came back fit and they had the biggest postseason workload out of all of them.
The club needs to identify what the issues are that has caused this season... but who is going to be the person to review the season... do we have anyone in the joint with footy smarts that can identify the problems?
I'm going to be the asshole and just say it.
We've known Kevvie a long time. He wasn't a plotter. He was eyes up. In the beginning, he was straight man to Alfie. They came as a pair, with Kevvie the shadow. He got little credit. He was just there.
Towards the end of his career he became the butt of (affectionate) jokes on the Footy Show. For being dumb. This was our Kevvie:
By the time he retired he managed to stealth his way to a bunch of premiership rings. Of his limited prospects, a career in football beckoned leading him into assistant coaching and best forgotten stint as a head coach in France. He was sacked by Bennett under circumstances unclear from Wayne's word soup on the issue.
We sometimes saw him as talking head on NRL chat shows. An awkward and inarticulate commentator who rarely offered much insight but we liked him regardless.
When Wayne got on the nose at the Broncos in his second term, Kevvie swooped in to replace him but was deemed too dumb, compared to a smoother talking Seibold. Kevvie's wife complained Pies stole his slogans, for whatever they were worth. Not much in the end.
When Seibold was appointed, the Old Boys circled the wagons around Kevvie in protest, and as their dominoes fell, they opened the path for Kevvie to take the reins.
His first two seasons were barely an improvement on Seibold, as he floundered with his inherited roster. For a former half, reunited with his former halves partner Alfie, he flailed trying to coach a semblance of structure into his spine, trying a different combo every other week. It wasn't until he imported another club's ready made half in Reynolds and a makeshift fullback in Te Maire Martin that anything started to click.
The saga of perma installing his son into an unfamiliar position, and the loss of Dearden and Walsh is by now legion. Throw Isaako in there as another failure.
Whatever happened last season that almost got us a premiership seems a world away, with the most recent season falling back into more familiar territory. We have seen multiple instances of experienced coaches of far inferior rosters taking Kevvie's team apart and throwing their carcasses to the wolves. There were excuses every time, but in the bigger picture it was superior coaching, not firepower.
All the while Kevvie faced the press with his by now familiar bumbling word salad of positive vibes and denial. None of it rang true.
We can point to different parts of the same elephant and pretend it's a trunk, a tail or a leg, but panning back, it's what we've always seen in the room. The coach is a good bloke. But he's dumb. Too dumb to outsmart his peers.
