Originally Posted by
Gray77
I’ve never had a problem with this point of view, you express it well and it certainly has some validity. But I think you go too far in characterising some of Woolf’s critics. None of us think we should have finished 16 points clear, especially not after 10 less games. None of us think it was ideal having Percival out and losing Thompson. None of us think it was ideal having the lockdown and a weird second half of the season with restrictions in place everywhere. I don’t think anybody is even saying that 2020 should have been as fun as 2019 either.
But, it should have been better than it was. We should have finished top of the pile, even if by only a small margin. We should have been more exciting to watch, and at the very least it should look like we are using what happened last year as the basis for what we wanted to do this season instead of looking like we wanted to rip up the blueprint completely.
It would be like Liverpool bringing in Tony Pulis and opting for long balls. They’d still win a lot more than they’d lose, they’d still be near the top but they’d be up there because they had good players and not because the system was brilliant. But eventually (or quickly maybe) people will ask why they’re doing it when they have the best team and just won the league playing good stuff.
You are right however about supporting the shirt and not the player, it’s something I’ve always tried to do. We follow the club more than anything, and players and coaches come and go but we and the club remain. Wanting the club to achieve things has always been more important than wanting a certain coach or a player to achieve things for us. However, aside from me being born and raised in St Helens there is something else that makes me love our club, and that is the style of RL I saw when I was a kid. It’s overly romantic to say we should always entertain, but when we have the best team and have seen our team be the best team whilst also being entertaining it is difficult for me to get on board with what we’ve been in 2020 for the most part.
We have the best team but have been dragged down by negative tactics. Look at the signings for 2021, this isn't some ‘we’ll get through the pandemic and then let rip next year’ kind of thing, it’s a ‘we’ll continue ramming it down the middle with bigger forwards in 2021’ kind of thing. This is us under this coach, and yes, we’ll win a lot more than we lose, and we may win trophies (I’ve never said we wouldn’t under Woolf) but anyone who looks at it constructively will wonder why we’ve opted for this when the alternative (playing a good style of RL) worked well for us in the last year or two. The season is long, maybe too long, and when league wins only mean so much in a play off system we need to enjoy the journey from week to week. Playing Woolf’s style won’t harm us too much in terms of points and trophy chances, and I’ve always gone to great lengths on here to say that we could win things under him. But it’ll harm us in the long run because less people will want to watch it, less people will enjoy it and we’ll be giving off yet another sign that as a club and as a fanbase we no longer care about our reputation and our culture for playing a creative and exciting brand of RL. We’ve appointed one coach in 15 years that actually cared about attacking RL, and we’ve repeatedly sold ourselves short in this department. This is what bothers me more than most, and once the excitement of getting back to LP next year subsides we’ll see crowds fall back watching Woolf’s tactics. If we were Hull KR, do whatever it takes to get a win, but St Helens, with this team? Surely we have to hope for more than this.
We will win on Friday, and I think we’ll win the GF, because I believe we have the best team. I also think we may win it again next year under Woolf, but I also believe the 7-8 months that lead up to it will be mind numbing compared to how they could be. My issue isn’t that Woolf will cost us trophies, it is that he will cost us a lot more in terms of where the club go after him. There may not be another Holbrook out there in 2022 to get everyone back enjoying watching Saints again, and if we win two titles under Woolf will the club even look for him? I don’t want Woolf to be the blueprint for every coach that comes after him, because a shiny pot after 8 months of tedium isn’t worth it for me. It may be to some, that’s fair enough, but the journey has to be as fun as the destination.