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If you haven’t realised it yet Penrith fans, over the off season you guys decided to trade in a Mercedes for a used Ford Pinto.
It might be a controversial choice, but I believe Anthony Griffin is by far and away the worst coach in the NRL, even beating out professional coaching bumblers like Jason Taylor and Andrew McFadden. And the worst thing is, he replaced someone who was actually good at what he did.
Ivan Cleary started his coaching career as the Warriors coach in 2006, remaining as their coach until 2011. In that time he guided them to multiple top eight appearances including a top four finish in 2007.
He even led them to the grand final in 2011 which was his final year. Afterwards of course he left the Warriors to take up an opportunity to lead a Penrith side from 2012 onwards, a side that quite frankly had a horrible squad.
Luke Walsh and Travis Burns should never have been anywhere near the top grade, let alone partnering together in the same side, and that was just the half of that outfit’s problems.
They ended coming 15th that year, however they improved vastly until 2014 where with an improved squad and despite a glut of injuries they jumped up the ladder, finishing in the top four and making it to the preliminary finals before they were eliminated.
Then in 2015, it looked like they may have taken the premiership in the early rounds, but after being ripped apart with injuries, including at one point having an entire starting 13 of injuries, they came 11th.
Then came October 19th 2015, where Penrith made the shock announcement that Ivan Cleary was fired, with Phil Gould quoting that it was due to personal reasons, and that his head was not in the right state to coach.
A coach is never supposed to admit that a team’s season is done until it is physically impossible to make the eight – well at the very least not in public. But that is what he did, saying in the later stages of the 2015 season in an interview that the season was over when his side could still make the eight.
I am sure that caused issues, so maybe you can justify his sacking, maybe. But what you can’t justify is who they replaced him with.
Anthony Griffin is a sham. He had one year where the Broncos did well, which was mainly due to Darren Lockyer and the emotion of the players around him trying to make him win another premiership in his last year, but since then has underachieved and disappointed fans for years.
It is no coincidence that the second he is fired, essentially the same team he had goes from sneaking into the eight in 2014 to losing the grand final in golden point in 2015. I live in Brisbane, so I know a lot of Broncos fans and so many of them were happy when Wayne Bennett was appointed, not just because Bennett was coming back but because Griffin was leaving. And those same fans were laughing when Griffin was appointed as the Panther coach. I can see why they were.
Just look at the specifics of what he did as the Brisbane coach. He brought the world fabulous ideas such as Josh Hoffman (a man who has a one to one ratio of passes performed to tries scored) in the halves, Corey Parker at prop, Ben Barba in the halves, Matt Gillett at five-eighth, Justin Hodges at fullback and picked a past it Scott Prince over Corey Norman consistently.
Heck Jarrod Wallace is on record saying that he lost all of his confidence under Griffin, with him on numerous occasions picking him and not actually playing him. And with the amount of rubbish he put Corey Norman through I swear he was trying to murder his career.
Now I am just going to say this, I think the Penrith side is nowhere near as good as some people think. Reagan Campbell-Gillard is the most overhyped forward in the game. I see people comparing him to Jake Trbojevic, sometimes even favourably. He isn’t a bad player but if you think he is even close to J. Turbo you have rocks in your head.
Moylan is also overrated, barely in the top five fullbacks in the game, but he is still a good player. A lot of these Penrith players are good, but not as good as people say that are, at least in my opinion. Having said that, if they don’t make the eight then it is all the fault of their coach.
It seems Griffin has decided to pick up from where he left off and do his best to destroy the careers of promising young players and make his team as bad as possible.
In his short time as coach so far, he has left destruction in his wake. The biggest impact coming from when he decided to send Jamie Soward packing to England so that Bryce Cartwright and Nathan Cleary could be in the halves together.
Now if you have a choice of having a rookie half and a veteran half as your halves pairing, or a rookie half and a second rower as your halves combination what would you chose? Well if you are Griffin, you chose the second option, sending your experienced half overseas so you are stuck with what you picked.
Yes, given Griffin’s history of shocking halves choices it was only a matter of time before he did something like this, and his victim this time is Bryce Cartwright, a very promising edge forward. So what has this done to Cartwright? Well it has turned Bryce Cartwright, the exciting ball runner who was improving each week, into someone that thinks he needs to do everything.
Now he just crabs across the field, throws more risky offloads and gets exploited in defence even more than normal. He seems to think that now he is in the spine he has to come up with the big plays, and that is hurting his attack so much.
I think the fact that they won their first two games with that halves pairing was the worst thing that could happen to Penrith, because now Cartwright will be there all year, and us fans will only be able to watch in horror as we witness his regression.
And it isn’t just this that makes me think he is the worst coach in the game, this year the Penrith attack has looked clueless close to the line, their defence has been disgustingly bad and his bench rotation makes Andrew Mcfadden’s look amazing.
Take their last game against Parramatta as a prime example of these factors. Parramatta were playing with no halves (no Jeff Robson doesn’t count) and in the first half they scored four tries. All of them looked far too easy, because they all were.
They made a rookie fullback playing out of position look like a superstar half. Imagine if Corey Norman was playing. The Penrith defence doesn’t communicate at all, with some players rushing up while others slide, and they always seem to stack defenders on one side of the field which just caused huge problems if the opposition just spreads the ball slightly.
Then when Penrith had all the field position in the second half there were so many dropped balls and poor ends to sets in attacking zones it was insane. It is almost like they have the Dragons’s goal-line offensive coach. And as for the bench, Zak Hardaker got a grand total of 0 minutes.
Why? Why the hell would you pick a player and not use him? Penrith only won that game because of Parramatta injuries during it, and it was against a side that had already lost its halves, best forward and best winger before the game.
Recently Peachey was suspended for not showing up to training while James Segeyaro was sent to England because he didn’t respect Anthony Griffin.
If I was a Penrith fan I would get ready as things like this to continue occurring. Griffin is out of his depth here. He makes mediocrity look attractive with his horrible coaching record. I have no idea why Gus Gould decided to hire him. Mary McGregor has deservedly been under focus this year with people highlighting his inability to coach attack into his side. But at least he can coach a defence into a side. Griffin can’t even do that, so why isn’t he attracting nearly as much heat?
You do have to hand it to Griffin though. He has turned another promising team into an utter mess within 18 rounds, normally it takes people 18 months to do this.
It has only been 19 weeks of his first season, but it has been enough time to rule that the Griffin experiment has been a failure. But there is good news here for Penrith fans, because I believe the likelihood of Griffin actually seeing out his three-year coaching deal are about as strong as the likelihood that Newcastle will win the premiership this year.
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