Seibold General Discussion

If there is one niggling thing that does worry me a little about Seibs is that I get the impression he is perhaps relying on the games stats and performance numbers a little too much.

I can't really put my finger on the problem but we look like a team without any actual 'feel' for the game.

Its as if now we are just trying to meet a set of performance numbers as individuals and discarded or lost any instinctive play at all.
 
If there is one niggling thing that does worry me a little about Seibs is that I get the impression he is perhaps relying on the games stats and performance numbers a little too much.

I can't really put my finger on the problem but we look like a team without any actual 'feel' for the game.

Its as if now we are just trying to meet a set of performance numbers as individuals and discarded or lost any instinctive play at all.
Was thinking about this very same thing. That is what Wayne has. He has a great feel for the game and doesn't need reems of computer paper full of stats to know what to do. I'd love for us to just get back and play some "football". Start enjoying the game again.
 
The Harvard handbook can't give Seibold all the answers.

He really needs to move away from the high focus he has on stats. Stats tell the story you want them to tell.
Its painful to hear his post match pressers, he trys to make things sounds much rosier then they really are.
He focuses far too much on the technical side of coaching, and is probably over coaching this team. This is a team full of young blokes, things need to be simplified, each player needs to know and understand well his exact role within this team.
Attack will come, but at the moment we are an absolute mess and cannot organise our defensive structures.
The team look far too fatigued in many of the games I have seen this year.
To me the playing group do not look happy, which is not a good sign especially this early in the year.

Is he overworking them, or not working them hard enough. I think he may need to review his coaching staff at seasons end if things do not drastically turn around.

This team needs a massive rocket up them, and to be honest I wouldn't be resigning Oates, Offa or TPJ at any point in the near future. These 3 blokes are some of our more experienced now, and need to know the way they're currently playing is just not good enough. They need to be playing for a contract, at at the moment none of them are..
 
I'm happy with Seibs and am certainly going to give him more than 8 rounds to judge him. If we are still playing like this next season then I will call it a failure.

I do want to call bullshit on a few things though.

1. This insistence that we have a similar squad so should be at least as good, that's simply not true. This squad has lost so much experience, it needed too IMO as Thaiday etc. was past it and while McGuire is still good we needed his money to retain these young guys, but still that experience is all gone. People talk about how experience is essential yet don't think the lack of it in this squad is an issue, go figure.

2. This shit we keep hearing about this team is a failure because they were expected to be top 4. How does what the media think mean anything? They are basically the most ill-informed and lazy analysts in any sport. They looked at where we finished on the ladder, a few good games from rookie forwards and went 'herpa derp, top 4". They didn't take into account the lack of structure this team has played with for years, the fact that we still didn't have a halfback, the experience that would be lost and the fact that these forwards will take time.

3. This team is rebuilding. People can say they aren't, or that 'the Broncos don't rebuild' or whatever other bullshit they want but that's not the case. The front office has clearly looked at the overall trajectory and realise we need to go through some pain to ultimately get better.

a) We finally have a halfback, we finally have a halves combination that compliment each other. For nearly every other team this is basic but for whatever reason it has taken over a year for the Broncos to arrive at that conclusion. Dearden is young but using this year for him to develop in the top grade and with Milford will pay off 10 fold.

b) Boyd is cooked. I love Boyd and he is one of my favourite players on and off the field but his body has let him down. I do not subscribe to this bullshit about it being his effort or any of that other crap but his body will not let him perform at the level required for fullback and he should never have been signed to this length of contract. This has weakened our spine compared to last season.

c) This team is learning structure for the first time, and that is going to take time. You can still see it in games. We have periods of fluency in attack and good shape but then when things get tough we revert back to the one out hitups and prayers for individual brilliance that we have had for years. It will take time to break those habits. This is not a criticism of Bennett but his style of coaching has crippled this team. His style can work and obviously has and he has 7 premierships to prove that but this team doesn't have the players in key positions to make it work. He should have realised that and fair play to him perhaps he did and was working on getting those players before the club decided to move him on. We will never know but I am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt there.

d) On paper in terms of results this team has gone backwards but we still had these issues the last couple of years. We still had shit defense last year, we still had major attitude problems which were largely covered over by results in games we probably should have won and Bennett's ability to get teams up which I believe is second to none. Even at our best last year it still resulted in us scraping into the 8 only to have our arse absolutely handed to us, at home in one of the most humiliating games I have witnessed in quite a while.

If people still maintain this team didn't need a rebuild in both personal and overall strategy then I don't know what else to say.

4. This constant comparison to Seibs and Bennett is just pointless. They are at opposite ends of their career and as of right now Bennett is better than Seibs in almost every aspect, obviously, and so he should be. You wouldn't look at a kid that has just come on to the tennis circuit who comes up against Djokovic and say "oh well, Djokovic won that easily this guy should just give it away now. Seibs needs time and this team needs time which is why they moved the 70 year old on and gave Seibs a 5 year contract.

Sorry for the long post but this is some points I have been wanting to say for a long time and it needed to be said.
 
The thing is, this squad scraped into the 8 last season and people will deem the season to be a success because thats the so called minimum for this club. What it doesn’t show is that the attitude has been terrible for a long time and was trending downwards. For me it all finally self destructed when the dragons flogged us in the finals last year. The squad hasn’t changed much at all and those mental scars are now on full show. If Bennett was here it’d be the same results. Some of these players are cooked and seibold really walked into a shit show at the worst possible time.

Going 15 and 9 isn’t scraping in, that’s a 63% win rate.
 
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I'm happy with Seibs and am certainly going to give him more than 8 rounds to judge him. If we are still playing like this next season then I will call it a failure.

I do want to call bullshit on a few things though.

1. This insistence that we have a similar squad so should be at least as good, that's simply not true. This squad has lost so much experience, it needed too IMO as Thaiday etc. was past it and while McGuire is still good we needed his money to retain these young guys, but still that experience is all gone. People talk about how experience is essential yet don't think the lack of it in this squad is an issue, go figure.

2. This shit we keep hearing about this team is a failure because they were expected to be top 4. How does what the media think mean anything? They are basically the most ill-informed and lazy analysts in any sport. They looked at where we finished on the ladder, a few good games from rookie forwards and went 'herpa derp, top 4". They didn't take into account the lack of structure this team has played with for years, the fact that we still didn't have a halfback, the experience that would be lost and the fact that these forwards will take time.

3. This team is rebuilding. People can say they aren't, or that 'the Broncos don't rebuild' or whatever other bullshit they want but that's not the case. The front office has clearly looked at the overall trajectory and realise we need to go through some pain to ultimately get better.

a) We finally have a halfback, we finally have a halves combination that compliment each other. For nearly every other team this is basic but for whatever reason it has taken over a year for the Broncos to arrive at that conclusion. Dearden is young but using this year for him to develop in the top grade and with Milford will pay off 10 fold.

b) Boyd is cooked. I love Boyd and he is one of my favourite players on and off the field but his body has let him down. I do not subscribe to this bullshit about it being his effort or any of that other crap but his body will not let him perform at the level required for fullback and he should never have been signed to this length of contract. This has weakened our spine compared to last season.

c) This team is learning structure for the first time, and that is going to take time. You can still see it in games. We have periods of fluency in attack and good shape but then when things get tough we revert back to the one out hitups and prayers for individual brilliance that we have had for years. It will take time to break those habits. This is not a criticism of Bennett but his style of coaching has crippled this team. His style can work and obviously has and he has 7 premierships to prove that but this team doesn't have the players in key positions to make it work. He should have realised that and fair play to him perhaps he did and was working on getting those players before the club decided to move him on. We will never know but I am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt there.

d) On paper in terms of results this team has gone backwards but we still had these issues the last couple of years. We still had shit defense last year, we still had major attitude problems which were largely covered over by results in games we probably should have won and Bennett's ability to get teams up which I believe is second to none. Even at our best last year it still resulted in us scraping into the 8 only to have our arse absolutely handed to us, at home in one of the most humiliating games I have witnessed in quite a while.

If people still maintain this team didn't need a rebuild in both personal and overall strategy then I don't know what else to say.

4. This constant comparison to Seibs and Bennett is just pointless. They are at opposite ends of their career and as of right now Bennett is better than Seibs in almost every aspect, obviously, and so he should be. You wouldn't look at a kid that has just come on to the tennis circuit who comes up against Djokovic and say "oh well, Djokovic won that easily this guy should just give it away now. Seibs needs time and this team needs time which is why they moved the 70 year old on and gave Seibs a 5 year contract.

Sorry for the long post but this is some points I have been wanting to say for a long time and it needed to be said.
Excellent post
 
I don't necessarily think Seibs is a bad coach, but there is definitely something off at the broncos. The following would have contributed to it -

  • Regardless of what anyone says there is obviously ongoing drama going on because of the way that Bennett left and Seibold arrived.
  • Because of this drama the players are obviously affected.
  • Add to this we have lost Thaiday and Sims and let go of Moose and Kahu.....possibly Niko. The last three were are very short notice. This is obviously disrupting the playing group.
  • I believe we have the most youngsters in our team that any other team in the comp
    • Flegler, Cardigan, Fafita, Dearden, Haas etc
  • Our old heads are not leading from the front
  • Everyone off contract is constantly being linked to other teams, Jet's unhappy, Lodge is homesick, TPJ misses Benny blah blah
This was their Captains 300th game and there was a teenager rookie to play for, if they can't get up for this game, they aren't going to get up for any. I get that there were a few unlucky tries, but that is exactly when we needed someone to pull the whole team up and lead from the front.

Seibs needs to focus on finding that person and getting the players to play for each other again. If they can't do that then they need to go else where, even if it means we lose some key players. The Jersey should be bigger than any one player and right now there aren't many showing pride in it.

It was sad to see our rookie half giving his all and no one even running with him to take a pass. Our problems aren't about skills, I think it's 100% attitude and effort.

TLDR, I don't think this can be pinned on Seibold. I think his focus has to 100% be on fixing the culture and behind the scenes drama. The players (generalising here) are obviously unhappy, they aren't playing for each other. Quieten everything down, fix the relationships and have some honest discussions.

Sort your shit out boys, this season is gone, but PLEASE, give us something to cheer about.
 
When relying on the last round of the season to determine whether you will be 5th or 8th only to be humiliated at home in a game that was over by the 30 minute mark, that is basically the definition of scraping in.

No it’s not.
 
Matt Cleary of theroar.com.au, wrote an article 'Bennett versus Seibold is less interesting than many, many, many things'
Nailed the makeup of our spine perfectly with this line in his piece.

Coaches can run out two running halfbacks, a slow hooker and a fullback who needs a Zimmer frame.
 
Can you explain how it is not? I gave you the time and respect to provide an explanation to my post, could you do the same please?

It’s not a step forward because we are going backwards. seibs was meant to improve us, not turn us into the knights.

Whoops I responded to the wrong question.

We didn’t scrape into the 8 because we finished 3 wins clear of 9th. Us making the 8 was still under question a few weeks out but we started playing well, and dispatched the premiers and seibolds souffs on the way.
 
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Seibs left Rabbitohs a much improved side, and came to the Broncos, a team with much to be desired. Vice versa with Wayne Bennett. I think Seibs is copping too much flak for Bennett's incompetence and Bennett is taking all the credit for Seibs legacy with the Rabbitohs.
Funny that this team with much to be desired beat the much improved Souths team last year. Twice. And they even had GI then who absolutely loves playing against us. But sure, that's obviously evidence of Bennett's incompetence somehow, maybe if you tilt your head to just the right angle and squint directly into the sun you can see it? And who could speak against Siebold's amazing legacy of inheriting a squad from Michael Maguire?
 
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Well done on the thread Broncsgoat. We know where you sit on this but appreciate your sentiment here.
Agree with some posts around over emphasis on stats but he does talk big on effort areas. If he's true to his word on effort areas then he must know there are several in the squad that aren't going to get him to where he wants to go in terms of this. We've given up 25 points plus a game for over two seasons which means he has to change personnel... particularly on the edges to get the defence right. His strategy seems to be give them enough rope to hang themselves then he can justify change. Roberts, Boyd even come to mind.

Me..I'm still on board and can see the change coming but appreciate all the frustration out there. Its bloody hard to watch.
 
I agree we have lost experience, but even taking that into consideration we still aren't a side who should be 2 from 6. We still have plenty of experience here as well tbf.
 

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