reckon just about everyone in this thread has lost true perspective at some stage.
we had just come off finals . we had openly stated we wanted mature players in the team and younger blokes were going to have to really earn their spot.
tuck had retired, people remember him dont they, a real big unit 189cm/90kg not overly quick ball winner. i dont growl because we promoted thomas who had a decent pre season as well,he was a like for like replacement. it made sense. in many ways he too had earned his spot.while i dont and didnt agree with promoting thomas instead of miles i dont look upon it as a huge mistake and understand the good reasons why they went that way.
its not as if there were no good reasons for promoting thomas.
we then had our best ruckman not available and instead of promoting miles we promoted stephenson. once again the logic behind this move is not and was not wrong, so again they had some good reasons as to why they did this.
my gripe here is a little different to most others id say. that is in promoting orren we have failed to play him. imo it seems he has done more than enough in the twos to get games.
imo where they have gone wrong is not finding a way to also promote miles quicker especially as he kept on tearing it up in games. to make him wait so long when we did have options to promote him earlier was a mistake. for me without hindsight it is probably the only real mistake.
we bag the club over this but looking at an overall picture i ask have they really got these things so badly wrong.
imo both thomas and miles deserve their chances others may disagree on thomas.
i can hear the abuse even now if we had failed to promote orren, and hampson went down in week one.. as poor as hampson was in most areas he was more than competetive at ruck contests.yep damned if they do damned if they dont with orrens promotion
i think it becomes too easy for all of us to just look at what has transpired,and in the process lose sight of why we did things 6 months.
as for other things like continually playing under performers,failure to play kids, failure to reward good seconds form well they are things for another time.