Everyone was on the out bandwagon is now on the in bandwagon, after a couple of good wins - nothing like backing the club/players/coaches is there, especially after such a short time
Everyone was on the out bandwagon is now on the in bandwagon, after a couple of good wins - nothing like backing the club/players/coaches is there, especially after such a short time
I ate a tuna sandwich on my first day!
It'll be the same again with a couple of under par performances and a surprise defeat. As with most things reality is usually within the two extremes.
I think what we've seen is a coach come into a successful side looking for something to freshen up a static squad and keep improving as teams around us inevitably improve. Early in the season those ideas were new to the players, some were out of position to cover injuries and we needed to work on slowing the pace for the WCC. It's perhaps not surprising that it resulted in some disjointed early performances.
In many ways it's reminiscent of when Daniel Anderson took over. The team already has the raw skills to entertain and score plenty of points through the season but, as Woolf said post match yesterday and Anderson said similar, it's the spells of control in defence like the last two games which help you win tight games and ultimately trophies.
Looking forward to see how it pans out.
I don't think it was a proper "Out Bandwagon" taken into account the injuries early doors we were playing one man rugby reminisent of the KC school of coaching. It was basically a review and fans were concerned we needed to change direction, the lockdown has helped in that it allowed us to switch off and take stock, if you remember our wingers were not scoring any tries because Lomax and Fages were shut down in the middle and we looked like 2 teams consisting of a set of forwards and a set of backs.
Fast forward these last 2 games now and everyone has seen the right approach with the return of passing skills and telepathic support play, which has always been the Saints Brand of Rugby that many clubs quietly admire.
I too was worried that KC2 had arrived, but great coaches/managers have the ability to change when something isn't working. I have to now give benefit of the doubt to KW, I don't know what has changed, rosta, tactics, etc but the outcome achieved is far better!
Reflection and hindsight are two sides to the same coin.
Woolf had us wresting in the early season, and now that’s pretty much impossible with the 6 again rule.
That, for me, is the biggest plus of the restart and of course a full squad available.....
KC tried to turn us into a Wigan spoiler type team at the ruck, and he had great success (not!)
Can't stop the spirits when they need you.
This life is more than just a read through.
The other perspective is what if we didn't have the lockdown would we have seen such a big transition.
We played very poorly in more ways than one in those 2 matches against pre lockdown matches with Huddersfield and Castleford (minus Percival), without the forced break would we played completely different against the Catalans and Leeds..........I should imagine that would be very highly unlikely.
Chuffed to bits for Woolf, two difficult periods for him his baptism of fans expectations at the beginning and the unknowns during the shutdown. We maybe can assume Woolf, Marshall and Wellens have had a pow wow with the senior players and created these positives, Matt Daniels also needs a fair bit of credit for his individual training programmes and to come blasting off with a superb level of conditioning of the players.
He's taken the opportunities given to him, full credit. Not many coaches get a 5 month break to work out why things weren't going well, and don't then get to come back with rules changed that suit the strengths of the side. He's been a lucky coach in that respect because without the break we'd have struggled to have enough time to change things, but he's used the time well and has obviously worked hard in the break to get us on the front foot, which is the mark of a good coach.
So to be clear - Woolf is lucky because the game changed in a way that doesn’t suit his methods, which means his side is now doing well under his methods?
Makes perfect sense to me and surely far more credible than the alternative of a few key players out and throwing our heart and souls into a brutal WCC with a weakened team.
I also remember watching his Tonga team thinking - wow this lot are so boring.
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I'll give you that, my wording did lead to me sounding like I was contradicting myself, fair enough.
When he arrived he wanted us to play a certain way and probably would have continued with that plan if we hadn't had a lengthy break. The break has allowed him to work out that it wasn't getting us results and probably gave him time with his senior pros to work out a way forward. Without the rule change I'm not sure we may have seen more than some subtle tweaks or a change in emphasis, but the rule change has allowed us to do more within the gameplan he has set us up to play with, and I'm giving him credit for having us on the front foot to take full advantage of it. I don't for a second think he only has one method, I am saying that he had a preferred method for us when he arrived, and that method has now been altered slightly and has been very effective as the rule change has allowed us extra advantages on top of it.
Tonga are only important to a certain degree really. They aren't his players most of the year, and he got them to play a style that he feels is better suited to those players. Full credit to him for doing that, he saw what he had and maximised their potential. His method for coaching Tonga wasn't the same as the method he wanted for us originally. It's not unknown for coaches to look at a club side and a national side and have completely different attitudes to the players at their disposal, and coaching a national side in a 4 week comp is completely different to a 9 month season at club level. How exciting were England under Kevin Keegan for example?
Woolf is obviously (IMO) a talented coach, and I've never said otherwise. My issue was never with him, because I've always said on here that a coach should be free to get his team to play the way he wants them to. My issue was that we saw changes in our style of play that indicated that he was looking to prove something to future NRL suitors, and that those changes weren't necessarily going to benefit us given he would likely only be here for 2 years. Given that everyone now thinks this is Saints as Woolf really wanted them to be originally, I wonder why we never saw it before the break? Playing in a WCC definitely affects results around it, it happens most years, but it doesn't affect style of play. You'll find hardly anyone on here who is more relaxed about us losing a few regular season games than me, because I see the structure of the league as one we can manipulate and use to our advantages at key parts of the season, so I don't get fussed at a few losses early in the season, especially with a WCC there to focus on. But the style of play was awful, and light years from 2018 and 2019, and that was down to Woolf.
He's obviously tweaked things and used the break better than the other coaches, because he is a top coach. We didn't look like we did before the break because he was a crap coach, but because that is how he wanted us to play and believed it would reap rewards, for us and for him. I don't believe it would have, in terms of us being the best team we could have been where we are the best team in a weak comp. He's altered stuff, I'm happy he's done it because I want us winning games and feeling happy about life. But you cannot ignore the fact that he's had 5 months to alter stuff, and as a team we've had a rule change that benefits us. It would have benefitted us under any coach really.