Adam O'Brien replacement?

Re: Toovey, that was a battle-hardened, unified, premiership winning side he inherited, stacked with good players. They barely needed coaching. It started getting really bad when those players started moving on, and then I’m pretty sure he went to the super league and did a bad job.

Whereas Flanno managed a team with a very weird mix of youth and veterans, head cases and FIGJAMs etc to a premiership and from memory a 16 game win streak or something like that.

No comparison IMO.
 
Sharks grand final 17:

1. Ben Barba - Left Joey for dead as a recreational drug user and at this stage in his career had declined massively due to not taking care of himself, nothing like the player he was at the Dogs.
2. Sosaia Feki - Who?
3. Jack Bird - Very young player at this point in his career. Played by far his best footy under Flanagan.
4. Ricky Leutele - Like Feki, meat and potatoes “do a job” squad filler type.
5. Valentine Holmes - Obviously Val was the big strike weapon in that backline but, like Bird was very young but played like a vet under Flanno.
6. James Maloney - “Jimmy Wins” is probably the most underrated player of the NRL era, obviously one of the two most important players in them winning the comp.
7. Chad Townsend - It’s impossible to overstate how much of a meme Chad was at this stage of his career. He’s become a lot better now but the player he was still taints the modern perception people have of him. 2016 Chad Townsend is one of the worst premiership winning halfbacks.

13. Paul Gallen - #1 big ego which needed to be managed - his numbers in 2016 weren’t as ridiculous as in previous years, but he played his most effective footy in this team under Flanno - Shane got the 20m zone ball hogging handbrake tendencies under control. Ironically got a try assist in this game off a set play Chad almost messed up for them - Gal literally shoves Chad out of the way.
12. Wade Graham - For me Wade’s always been overrated, but like Gal tamped down a lot of his bad tendencies in this team.
11. Luke Lewis - Great player and coach’s dream, can’t use him to bolster my argument so I’ll move on.
10. Matt Prior - Journeyman who Flanno miraculously but bizarrely got selected for the Blues at one point.
9. Michael Ennis - #2 big ego - another guy who played his best footy under Flanno despite being past his physical prime. Never a dynamite attacking #9, prone to the odd brain explosion or stupid penalty, but you didn’t see so much of those in this team - always niggled and cheated in a much smarter way in this team.
8. Andrew Fifita - King ego. Absolute plonker. Openly insulted the coach from the field and in the media. Aaaaand… played the best footy of his career under said coach and got robbed of the Clive Churchill Medal. Sensing a theme…

14. Gerard Beale - Injury cover. Journeyman.
15. Chris Heighington - You could literally hear his old bones creaking through the TV.
16. Sam Tagataese - Definitely was in this team.
17. Jayson Bakuya - Man. This team had a shocking bench.


For me this is one of the worst teams to win the comp in the NRL era on paper. Very short on attacking flair compared to others and actually weren’t an elite defence that season, likely because the team was a bit old and couldn’t absolutely put the clamps on teams week after week like eg the current Panthers can or those Roosters sides could.

But Flanno got them up when it counted & they were really good at forcing their opposition off their game & to play the kind of game they wanted to play. If you can get Paul Gallen to play winning rugby league instead of rack up good stats in a way which loses you the game, you’re a top notch man manager in my book.

The club which is synonymous with choking, full of players who’d choked in previous years, put it together and won, having to come from behind in two of their finals wins. That’s a pretty good recommendation and the only reason he doesn’t have a job now is the trifling matter of all the cheating and corruption.
 
Last edited:
The Bradford job Toovey took was impossible. Sad what’s happened to what used to be a great club … they actually got relegated to third tier for a while. And couldn’t even afford to play at their historical home ground for a while.
 
Flanagan would have won the comp with Bradford. He would have got Paul Gallen playing a much better brand of footy for them.
 
Urban Dictionairy comes in handy James.

Though I was already down with the FIGJAM. WOFTAM though I had to look up.

Clearly PEBCAC.
 
As we all know AOB was assistant coach at storm for years then couple at roosters, he was given a compartmentalised job to work on specifically at each club. He hit his ceiling doing this, we thought with all that experience at the successful clubs he could step up and run the whole shebang.
Unfortunately we were wrong the club has two options. Dump him and look for a new coach in a market not bursting at the seams with options? Or find a coaching director to put over him and take some pressure off. At least this way the club bosses could save face, saying we weren’t wrong just getting him extra support. That just my humble opinion
 
Fathead Thomas said:
Or find a coaching director to put over him and take some pressure off. At least this way the club bosses could save face, saying we weren’t wrong just getting him extra support. That just my humble opinion
Click to expand...

Firing him, or putting a coaching director over him is the same thing.

Coaches don't tend to last long once that happens.

I think what will happen is OB gets this year and next he will be under the pump and won't see out the year.

The thing that gets coaches fired is the intense media scrutiny. We don't attract that as it is a given we are ****e and thats business as usual.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top