DANZ
Again I'm not trying to defend ME, history says he hasn't been that successful, but the players last year got Bluey sacked cause he didn't fit "their" game plan. So they were shit all year, so this year they followed the game plan till after the Penrith game, then turned the season around for 8 weeks coaching themselves. Awesome we all got stiffys, but unfortunately the season was 7 or so weeks longer than that and the team managed to serve up more of the same shit from the previous year. My point did they suddenly go ok we have proved if we do our own thing we're unbeatable, but lets go back to ME's game plan to prove he knows nothing and we know everything. Cause if it was their aim they absolutely proved it. Shame they couldn't play ME's plan first half, get hammered then change at half time back to their better system and have the hell comeback.
It is my belief that Bluey was just not up to it - I havent heard whether the team played crap under Bluey on purpose, but I wouldnt put it past some of them. And that mentality popped up again this year under ME.
I doubt they went back to ME's game plan at all.
I would put the shocking games after that Penrith down to two things:
1. Poor preparation - having a meeting away from the coaches and saying we are going to play this way against this team this week is all they would have had, i doubt there would have been much practice of that style throughout the week.
2. Soft players - even though the likes of those three I mentioned earlier - Friend, Mannering and Leuluai gave their all for the team (as did others like Taylor and Matagi) there are too many of the players who are not mature enough to say I'm going to give all of myself to the the team no matter what - johnson, locke, matulino, mateo, packer were all very average most of the time - all five of them spent time under Bluey too so if there reaction to his poor coaching was to give up then it could of easily happened again.
surfin I support what you're saying about the players mate, i wish they were all like Friend, Mannering and Leuluai.