The Brian Smith Appreciation Thread

He made some selection mistakes last week lets not sugar coat that however the prvious 3 weeks his selections were genius!!
I think alot will be learnt from last week and the team named today will be different
 
He has to impress the board though. They might not tell him who to play but they could give away hints, and Smith would know what makes the board happy and what doesn't.

The selections he makes this week will be better - they cannot be any worse.
 
Denno said:
He has to impress the board though. They might not tell him who to play but they could give away hints, and Smith would know what makes the board happy and what doesn't.

The selections he makes this week will be better - they cannot be any worse.
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you are discounting the effect of ego.

Smithy knows what makes the board happy. winning.

He believes he knows how to do that best. I would dare say he doesn't care who the board thinks should be picked, and nor does any FG coach.

as seen by last weeks debacle, he doesn't always get it right. but you don't get to 500 first grade games by accident, or without thinking you know best.

Smithy's problem might just be he doesn't pick the best players then formulate the plan, he formulates the plan then picks what he thinks are the players to suit the plan.

That sometimes works (Penrith), but when it doesn't, it is nasty to watch (Canberra).
 
Ok, Smith got last week wrong.
But has any Knights coach got it right in Canberra?
Really in the end the Knights have lacked direction in the halfs most of the season!!!
Our forwards have done an awesome job all year with the way they have got the meters!!
Mullen, Bailey & Dureau have had good matches 3 or 4 times this season and the Souths match was the ONLY time they have been on the same page this season. Really some players could and should of been drop back to NSW cup for really bad performances during the season but Smith showed some faith in the core group of the team and let them stay in the NRL team.
He is the first coach at the Knights to get rid of some dead wood and bring in some new players plus some juniors from the lower grades.

Remember the job Smith did at Parramatta, a club that was in the bottom four in all grades in the early 1990's and from 1997 to the end of his time there, they made the Grand Final in all grades (winning every grade bar nrl).
He has put in place a structure at junior and senior level at the Knights where every Grade from Harold Matthews to NRL has the best support staff ever the Knights have ever seen.
Also got Scott Campbell (Performance coorinator) & Keith Olsen (development coorinator) back from the dogs.
To do all that he must have alot of support from Robert Tew and other board members. It has to be time for the supporters to show some support as well to the man who is trying to bring our 3rd premiership (it won't happen in 2 or 3 seasons, it will take close to 5 or 4 seasons if we are luckey). Remember Hagan got a good team in 2001 from Warren Ryan (where David Waite & Mal Reilly did the hard work to start it off).
 
GUNNERS said:
A legend of what?

Playing mind games.
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If he made a mistake with the team selection, then that's still a whole heap less mistakes than the Knights made vs Canberra. Those are our top players and should have added more to the performance ... they are more to blame than Smith, imo.
 
GUNNERS said:
I have inside info.

Taufua-dropped
Dureau-dropped
Ciraldo-dropped
White-dropped

BS will be on the outer if we don't make the top 8.
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Honestly, I don't see these players having made the difference against Canberra. We were outplayed by the better side.
 
jamesgould said:
Honestly, I don't see these players having made the difference against Canberra. We were outplayed by the better side.
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so having 3 unfit props had nothing to do with the line breaks? having wicks fail to get out of marker, leading to tries, had nothing to do with it?

we will never know - but our *winning* team was never given the chance.

we lost before we stepped on the park, because we put a joke of a team out there.
 
jamesgould said:
If he made a mistake with the team selection, then that's still a whole heap less mistakes than the Knights made vs Canberra. Those are our top players and should have added more to the performance ... they are more to blame than Smith, imo.
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jamesgould said:
Honestly, I don't see these players having made the difference against Canberra. We were outplayed by the better side.
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You have to be kidding. We may have looked terrible on Sunday but that is due to a number of reasons:

1. Smith picked a **** line up.
2. Why was Danny Wicks playing. Let in two tries, and had his hands on his hips half the time. I think he could smell some pies in the grandstand.
3. Royal, Cross, Wicks have been injured, why bring them all back in the same match. Obviously they are lacking match fitness. Why play all 3.
4. We made 3 interchanges in the first 15 minutes. Simpson was off his feet at the back end of the first half but couldn't be taken off because we couldn't afford to use another interchange that half.
5. Karawana is ****. Why drop Dureau for him. Dureau > Karawana.
6. We lost because of BS. Stupid decisions even before the game.
 
macavity said:
so having 3 unfit props had nothing to do with the line breaks? having wicks fail to get out of marker, leading to tries, had nothing to do with it?

we will never know - but our *winning* team was never given the chance.

we lost before we stepped on the park, because we put a joke of a team out there.
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Well said.

Everyone take a step back, yes Brian has done good things for the club, but is he worth it in the long term.
 
Wicks shouldn't have been picked, but Royal and Cross (1 of them) would've been good. I have no idea why the line-up was shuffled around so much after we won 3 in a row - maybe he started taking things for granted.

Despite the poor selections, he is still the same coach - the one that has impressed many people for most of the year - even though we aren't in the top 8 and probably wont be.
 
wow, it's very easy to rip into Danny Wicks, but our problem is not in the forwards, they are ranked 3rd behind manly/melbourne when it comes to meters gained this year. It comes down to the attacking end, we got into Canberra's 20 meter area and got lost than gave away stupid penalties what gave them good field position and they scored very simple, it's happen too often this year (thank god for our good cover defence).
 
I see no reason why Smith can't bring success to the Knights. This is his first full season in charge and he's made major changes to the personnel and brought about a massive improvement on recent seasons. Go Smiffy.
 
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