BarnetFC wrote:Without getting all wishy washy and deep thinking about it - it's the culture letting Radford down, and he's part of it.
We've changed the owner, we've changed the coach, we've gone through several dozen players and the problems are the same. That tells me it's not an individual - although as Radford has followed this culture through as a player, coach and now head coach I don't see how he can possibly be the man to change it - but a collective culture that is the problem.
A culture is hard to quantify but the certain aspects and ingredients of it I see with our club are...
- we talk like a big club. It wasn't that long ago we had a dilapidated stadium (which we loved) and 5-6000 at home Super League games. I remember we won something like five of the first six around 1999 time and we subsequently got 7,000 in for Warrington at home (which we lost) and it was considered a big deal. The stadium, and the fantastic support, lulls us. We talk like it's inevitable that it will turn in our favour, and we don't have to work for it. We still blame referees. We don't fight for every point, fight for every loose ball. We concede penalties as if we won't be punished. We play out sets on opponent's lines expecting something to open up, without ever actually coming up with something brilliant ourselves to make it open up. Radford's "tactics" and this much vaunted "play book" we share with Doncaster (the poor bstrds) seem to be little more than "complete your set, get to the kick" and as long as our completion is high we'll win. It's like we're Hull FC, so they'll wave us in eventually. There's an arrogance. Paea said it when he signed, Hull FC are perceived as arrogant.
- We reward mediocrity. We pay excellent money to the players regardless of the results. When they fail, we pay them off - we have to, because no other club is stupid enough to pay them what we pay them. We pay players more than better clubs to get them here . Our geography works against us in that, but still. Tom Briscoe is paid less now at Leeds than he was here, because to play for Leeds is a big deal. It should be a blddy big deal to play for Hull. We should offer the same wage everybody else is offering and if they don't come, did we want that player anyway? Every year on here I see a clamour to get contracts renewed and in some cases I can see why but in most, why do we have that? These players are achieving nothing, every year. Why the rush to get new deals handed out? It can only be the fear that, like so many, they go somewhere else to a different culture and look alright and make us look daft. Why on earth would we be happy that we've rewarded Liam Watts with a new contract? He's been dog chocolate since he got here. A shadow of the player he was at HKR.
- We have a good portion of our squad, every year, commuting in, every day, from Leeds, Bradford and Castleford. We had a game postponed last year because of a traffic accident on the M62 which meant half our starting 13 was stuck on the motorway. You're representing Hull. You should live in Hull and breathe it like the people who pay your wages. It's not a big commitment to make, but then neither is tackling Scott Taylor 10 yards away from the line when you've got four team mates to help you and we can't do that either. Driving in, running about a couple of hours, driving back, driving in, losing 7-0 at home to Widnes, driving back. It's like a day job. And it needs to be so much more than that.
- The players know, as we saw with Gentle, that they can down tools and get the coach sacked if they don't like him much. Saw it with Kear, saw it with Sharp, saw it with Gentle. Whatever perceived mess Gentle left us in, I'd have been more inclined to stick with him after the Huddersfield debacle than not simply to show the players you are not downing tools and getting another coach the sack. Any coach who comes in here and says you're not drinking that much, you're not smoking that much, you live in the city that's paying your wages and it's not good enough to continue losing games as long as you keep the scores close knows that this group of players might down tools and he'll get the sack if they do - or at least that's what's happened before. They need the biggest rocket we can find shoved up them and they need the fires of hell burning inside them, but anybody who tries to do that to them might get the sack if they think he's a bit shouty or a bit hardline.
- lack of professionalism, on and off the field. The Catalans try at half time, the Castleford try straight from the start of the second half, the first ten minutes at Salford - if they were one offs then fine, but collectively they're indicative of a total lack of professionalism.
I always thought Radford was one of the worst exponents of all this when he played for us second time around. Bang average player, a captain who never said anything, silently stood behind the posts blowing out of his ars after conceding tries, a conceder of cheap penalties late in sets for blatant fouls, but rewarded and lauded constantly. We need to aspire to better than him as a player, better than him as a captain and better than him as a coach. Instead we renew his contract every year, and panic at any suggestion that he and the other players like him might not renew, then we make him the coach, then we make him the head coach and simply tell everybody we're better.
What's needed, IMHO, is a top class, hardline, modern thinking, no-nonsense coach. A total outsider, who can bring a professional pride and culture from elsewhere (because there's none of it here) and instill it into us - as Maguire did when he arrived at Wigan. I like the 'club Hull' idea, I really do - bringing our own youngsters through is producing great talent and it's long overdue. But they're coming into this culture where mediocrity is rewarded and it's all out for light ales after training even if we've lost three on the spin. Such coaches don't come cheap, but it will cost Pearson more in the long run if he doesn't pay it now.
Problem is, cultures are deeply ingrained and difficult to change. Players difficult to shift, replacements difficult to find, good practice and standards of behaviour take time to bed down. And we don't have time, because we've pisd so much of it away and there is no good will left in the support base.
Anyway, sorry, that was long, carry on.
You make a lot of very good points.
The highlighted bit in particular was part of what I was meaning a couple of posts ago.
