I'm not criticizing Kevvie. I just have no evidence to agree with any positive comment on his work with halves of any level of experience at this point. I like what Ezra said, but it counts for nothing yet.
If you can credit him in any way with Tyson's attitude, that would be a tick in his plus box. And Albert finished the season on a high, so maybe that's also a positive. But the top tier of halves he was dealt by the club, not really. You would have to say he failed with Brodie and Tom. But to his credit, he moved them on. Milford, good luck getting to the bottom of that one. Hard to blame Kevvie, but he gets no credit for reforming him either.
No one in the history of rugby league has ever rotated that many halves, and, **** me, we looked clueless there.
I'd be reserving my judgement when we see how long his initial pairing with Adam lasts. If it turns into yet another conga line, I'm out.
I think the most important aspect of the halves situation last year was that he moved on from who should've been his top tier halves pairings when it became clear it wasnt working and did so reasonably quickly.
He clearly wasnt a fan of Dearden even though he was a top junior the club had identified.
He worked with Croft as much as he could, because he played his ass off and tried as best he could to follow a game plan, but he's just nowhere near talented enough.
Milf he also tried hard with and stayed with as long as possible, but he just couldn't get him out of his funk... to Milf and Kevvie's credit he had Milf playing pretty well at the back end of the year when he returned to the team.
He could've done a Madge / Seibold and just stuck it out with those 3 to the bitter end and refuse to drop them, but he had the balls to drop Milf (the franchise's highest ever earner) and moved them on for much lesser known names and had them producing much better results than what you would expect.
I would be interested to see the rotation of players once we got past that mid-season reset.
I think he gave pretty well everyone a shot prior to that reset and then somewhat settled on a group moving forward from there.
There was some fluctuation in the halves, but I recall that being injuries and suspensions more than anything with Kelly missing long chunks and then Gamble being suspended.
But after the reset I think the core group he went with was largely
1. Tesi
2. Oates
3. Herbie
4 & 5. Cobbo, Arthars, etc.
6. Kelly
7. Gamble
8. Flegler
9. Turpin
10. Haas
11. Glenn
12. Riki
13. Kobe
Bench rotated a bit but kept picking up niggling injuries to guys like TC, or suspensions to Flegler, etc.
The only real point of fluctuation was in that right side pairing, but Staggs was always getting center and then they put him on ice for the season. Kevvie ended up giving several players a run out there with Cobbo basically being the only constant and now Arthars has been loaned out and depth backs brought in... so maybe Kevvie wasnt confident in many of his options outside of Cobbo.
I think Kevvie has done a decent job of resetting the culture and pruning the team down to what core he wants.
He's done well given the huge chunk of salary cap we are playing without... and there could've been a real slide after the mid season reset with shoulders being tapped and senior players being moved on very abruptly, but instead it seemed to reinvigorate the players that survived and I thought we would've picked up more wins had it not been for injuries, etc.
