First off I'm a Newman fan, I was one of his biggest fans before he was captain and thought he was the best choice for the role when it became vacant. Played with heart, put his body on the line and was our most reliable kick of the ball out of the backline.
I was at the race when they ran out last night and saw how all players went about the warm up and how they ran onto the ground up close and personal.
I've listened to KB and the likes talk about how ridiculous it is for Trent to be in the leadership group.
We all saw the game and how all players played and carried themselves.
Weighing all of this up the sooner Trent is our clubs captain the better (If he wants it).
This is an example why:
Our local cricket side out in the far east had not won a Division 1 premiership since 1934 and were sitting in Division 2 with very few finals appearances. We would throw money at past district players to come and play, who would always fail and never brought us success. Our junior program went through a very fortunate dynasty in the late 90's early 2000's thanks to the success of the Australian cricket team and junior cricket participation was high and our Senior list grew that way. This brought through about 30 young players over the space of the last decade to develop. All talented enough and developed accordingly very well.
In the 2000's we missed out just to make the finals the 3 seasons in a row, with the addition of these new younger guys along with our older core group of experienced players. 2 years ago our great club captain of 20 years retired along with 2 other long serving players that were hanging around trying to get the club into Division 1, as a result our list now looked extremely raw with no-one experienced to lead them. We were tipped to be playing Division 3 by the following season.
A 19 year old kid came to the executive committee in April 2008 and put his hand up saying he wanted to captain the club and lead us into Division 1, and that he will defer his Uni course to do so. This was as kid who has played 1 season of Senior 1sts. It wasn't decided he would captain for sometime and was eventually appointed, only after we failed to sign an experienced player do lead the club, so as a Plan B we went with the young man.
Cut the story short, our senior side with an average age of 21, our captain of 19 years old; a fresh young leader that all players related to socially, personally and professionally, the club had the competitions first ever undefeated season and went on to win the Division 2 premiership.
The club was in Division 1 for the first time since the 1980's and the fairy tale continued somewhat with the same side making the Grand Final in Division 1 only to lose with 4 overs to spare. Coming from a club that was all but finished and washed away to Division 3 we made a Division 1 GF in the space of 24 months.
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Why is this relevant to RFC? Trent Cotchin?
I can promise you the reason why it was turned around was the combination of the following:
- Fresh leadership that 100% of the playing group related to and respected and admired.
- Further developed committed youngsters that had nothing to lose.
This is relevant because, as much as I'll defend Chris Newman on most occasions IMO Trent needs to be captain. Not because he's the most promising player but they way he handles himself on field and by all accounts off field, Trent's leadership is part of the clubs transformation.
Its the little things, when the boys ran out Trent was 3rd out of the race, he turned around and made an effort to tap every single RFC player on the shoulder as they ran out after him. He's also not a downhill skier.
As the most pro-Newman poster on here (most likely) I have never been so confident that the sooner Cotchin is our captain the better our clubs transformation will be. I'm not comfortable with dropping a captain mid season, I'm a little bit disappointed we'll have to wait till next year at the soonest but for mine it must happen.
Sorry for the enormous post but it has some significance and comparisons to where we are at.
P.S Sorry Chris.
