Adam O'Brien replacement?

frankLauda said:
Yeah great player, he’s in the top 10 players I would say. But he’s the highest earning player right now on 1.4. I don’t blame Ponga totally, that’s the deal we had to do to keep but where we are at as a club.
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We struggle to sign players as it is, we need some middling forward and can barely get one of those.

What are you going to do with an extra 1.4mil? We would wind up giving it to a player worse than Ponga.

Take Ponga out of the side and we really will be sure bet for the spoon we would be lucky if we score another try the year no one else looks like doing anything.
 
OnTilt said:
We struggle to sign players as it is, we need some middling forward and can barely get one of those.

What are you going to do with an extra 1.4mil? We would wind up giving it to a player worse than Ponga.

Take Ponga out of the side and we really will be sure bet for the spoon we would be lucky if we score another try the year no one else looks like doing anything.
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Yeah, I wouldn't want him to leave, but it sux we have to pay him so much. I think he's a 1mil player, not 1.4
 
sherpa said:
For me the real issue is that players don't really seem to improve once they start playing in our first grade team. I thought Clifford showed a lot of potential when he turned up here, but he progressively lost confidence and his game suffered. I thought Leo Thompson looked great at the start of last year, but have not really seen him improve. Bradman Best is obviously a talented player but he appears to have stalled as well. I'm struggling to think of a player who has improved under our system, maybe Dom Young, but you would think that was going to happen anyway.
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The game has changed dramatically over the last 2 years and we seem to be playing the old style in basically a new game. We are behind the times atm
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
💯

Wayne Bennett, notoriously, has never been a particularly gifted X’s and O’s coach, and I doubt he’s suddenly discovered an aptitude for it in his 70’s. He’s the GOAT (or at least on Mt Rushmore with Bellamy & Gibson) because he’s such a great man manager. Players will run through a brick wall for him.

Bennett is also stereotyped as conservative, but would you say his Souths side and the Broncos side he coached between 2015 and 2018 were boring and didn’t score a lot of points? Nope, what he does is embrace a style of play which fits the players he has, empowers them to be the best version of themselves. His Dragons sides were conservative and played the percentages because it fit the players he had.

It’s really hard to find coaches their players love like that and of the guys without an NRL job now it’s pretty much just Flanagan who has the reputation of being a really good man manager beloved by his players. And yeah his Sharks sides weren’t pretty to watch, but was that him forcing a scrappy, mean, grinding style on his playing group, or was it him embracing a style which fit those players?
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Bellamy is great at making average footballers into great team players.
Bennett is a good coach of good players.
That’s the difference.
Flanagan is not in the same postcode as either Bellamy or Bennett.
 
Honestly, we needed a new coach mid last season. We had such a good roster past few seasons and we signed a rookie unknown coach :brickwall:
our last 13 matches they’ve gone 2-11 and they weren't pretty scorelines.
 
Rookie coaches aren't the issue. It's the type of coach in my opinion.

Though, it would be nice to get the right type of coach, that also has runs on the board. Why risk it....again.
 
Defence wins games said:
Bellamy is great at making average footballers into great team players.
Bennett is a good coach of good players.
That’s the difference.
Flanagan is not in the same postcode as either Bellamy or Bennett.
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I did not, at any stage, say he was as good as Bennett or Bellamy. I even referred to a Mt Rushmore of coaches on which I put Bennett, Bellamy, Jack Gibson and, notably, not Shane Flanagan.
 
To be fair to AOB he hasn't had an easy job, sure we had a few decent players on the roster, and Brown had us going in the right direction but we were still rebuilding from back to back woodenspoon years in hindsight a rookie coach probably wasn't the best choice

You might look at someone like Craig Fitzgibbon and be envious, but he turned down the role at the knights and I think Sharks were in a better place then where we were when AOB took over.

There is no denying Todd Payten has done absolute wonders at the Cowboys to take a Roster that everyone thought was going to get a spoon and with the addition of Chad turned them into a top 4 team is pretty special and the best case of what a good coach can do for a team. Sure it helps that there was a hell of a lot of talent coming through there but the speed of their rise was pretty phenomenal.

Jason Demitriou had worked closely with Bennet for a long time and was already part of that system and simply took over a pretty awesome roster and didnt have to change too much. He did have to contend with Reynolds leaving though, but has done wonders with Ilias.

Brad Arthur has had a pretty long career and has had a lot of ups and downs along the way, he built a pretty good roster there at para so but it has never been able to really take that next step.

The coach I am looking forward to see how they go is Cameron Ciraldo, I see the Dogs in a similar position to where we were a few years ago so it will be interesting to see how they turn things around.
 
OnTilt said:
To be fair to AOB he hasn't had an easy job, sure we had a few decent players on the roster, and Brown had us going in the right direction but we were still rebuilding from back to back woodenspoon years in hindsight a rookie coach probably wasn't the best choice

You might look at someone like Craig Fitzgibbon and be envious, but he turned down the role at the knights and I think Sharks were in a better place then where we were when AOB took over.

There is no denying Todd Payten has done absolute wonders at the Cowboys to take a Roster that everyone thought was going to get a spoon and with the addition of Chad turned them into a top 4 team is pretty special and the best case of what a good coach can do for a team. Sure it helps that there was a hell of a lot of talent coming through there but the speed of their rise was pretty phenomenal.

Jason Demitriou had worked closely with Bennet for a long time and was already part of that system and simply took over a pretty awesome roster and didnt have to change too much. He did have to contend with Reynolds leaving though, but has done wonders with Ilias.

Brad Arthur has had a pretty long career and has had a lot of ups and downs along the way, he built a pretty good roster there at para so but it has never been able to really take that next step.

The coach I am looking forward to see how they go is Cameron Ciraldo, I see the Dogs in a similar position to where we were a few years ago so it will be interesting to see how they turn things around.
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the knights should be backing aob in the same way parra backed arthur.
2017 they go top 4 , 2018 wooden spoon, 2019 they run 5th. in 2018 they were tipped as genuine contenders before a ball was kicked and only managed 6 wins for that season. there was plenty of pressure on the board to sack arthur throughout the year aswell. i think the point is 1 poor season shouldnt see the coach on the chopping block and parra are a perfect example of trusting whats in place despite the short term result.
any sacking of the head coach is pretty much conceding your season, thats what your telling players, staff and fanbase.

unpopular opinion on here but id like to see us continue to back AOB.
 
EASBay17 said:
the knights should be backing aob in the same way parra backed arthur.
2017 they go top 4 , 2018 wooden spoon, 2019 they run 5th. in 2018 they were tipped as genuine contenders before a ball was kicked and only managed 6 wins for that season. there was plenty of pressure on the board to sack arthur throughout the year aswell. i think the point is 1 poor season shouldnt see the coach on the chopping block and parra are a perfect example of trusting whats in place despite the short term result.
any sacking of the head coach is pretty much conceding your season, thats what your telling players, staff and fanbase.

unpopular opinion on here but id like to see us continue to back AOB.
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I'm happy to back him and hope everything goes well this year. I was given a bit of a reality check by Krusty the other day asking what positives we see though. He's in his fourth year here and the team doesn't really have an identity. I don't see the basics bedded in of either a good defensive side or a good attacking side. That's a worry for me.
 
O'Brien would probably walk into a 200k a year assistant coach role at any club in the NRL, but if he wants another head coach role, he should be looking for a job as an actual coach of a NSW cup or Qld cup or even an SL side. He needs to show he can develop young players and put together winning game plans.
He probably wouldn't be open to doing a Rick Stone and seeing out the rest of his contract as our reserve grade coach, but reckon that would work for us and be a great role for him to improve his resume, while not losing all the knowledge he has gained of the players over the last few years.
 
If the year before last AOB’s Knights made the top 4 with a 16-8 record, rather than scraped in with a 12-12 record and a horrific for & against, I think the majority of people would be backing him & putting 2022 down as an anomaly or the playing group getting ahead of themselves.

I backed AOB hard but so much of the way we play under him makes no sense at all to me and many others on here.

He’s only going to win fans back with results. Until that happens, if you think the playing style is holding the players back, the results being bad is only going to reinforce that opinion.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
If the year before last AOB’s Knights made the top 4 with a 16-8 record, rather than scraped in with a 12-12 record and a horrific for & against, I think the majority of people would be backing him & putting 2022 down as an anomaly or the playing group getting ahead of themselves.

I backed AOB hard but so much of the way we play under him makes no sense at all to me and many others on here.

He’s only going to win fans back with results. Until that happens, if you think the playing style is holding the players back, the results being bad is only going to reinforce that opinion.
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Yeah i am hoping he can learn from his mistakes and evolve with the times. The game is very different from a few years ago we need to be attacking at least a couple of plays each set on average.
 
Ak-47 said:
Honestly, we needed a new coach mid last season. We had such a good roster past few seasons and we signed a rookie unknown coach :brickwall:
our last 13 matches they’ve gone 2-11 and they weren't pretty scorelines.
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How have we had 'such a good roster'?

Our spine most of last year consisted: Hoy, Clune, and Randall. We have had absolutely no depth in the forwards, Gagai can't tackle, the Saf's and Clifford went missing.

So, in what universe is that a good roster, and what coach gets us into the finals with that?

Some of you need a deadset reality check on the squad the Knights actually had and have.
 
Defender1 said:
How have we had 'such a good roster'?

Our spine most of last year consisted: Hoy, Clune, and Randall. We have had absolutely no depth in the forwards, Gagai can't tackle, the Saf's and Clifford went missing.

So, in what universe is that a good roster, and what coach gets us into the finals with that?

Some of you need a deadset reality check on the squad the Knights actually had and have.
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The roster and roster depth this year is better than last year imo. but i agree re last year, the spine was horrendous, how much of the pearce Non replacement is on Aob? The club dropped the ball there i think, brailey missed half the season and ponga pretty much missed the other half. In the last 10 years our best roster has been borderline top 8 at best.
 
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