I’m struggling with

Opening: “a rare case of a deserved second”

and Ending: “Logic would suggest too much water has passed beneath that bridge and that perhaps both the club and player would feel it best to leave the past in the past.

But when it comes to second chances in rugby league, when has logic ever played a role?

If there’s no logical reason how did we come to the conclusion it’s deserved.

Also isn’t the message self defeating if he comes back. Then it isn’t the case of 200 games doesn’t make you immune to career ending decisions it means 200+ games buys you a golden ticket to circumvent the longer term consequences at least once.

It feels like a bipolar article that eat’s its own head.

I think the problems stem from thinking getting to the grand final meant going forward they were the second best team and on the precipice of a golden era

When in reality their 10th best F/A suggested they were at best a middle of the pack team that caught lightning in a bottle and needed hard decisions to forge a way forward.

You still heard references to ” how close” which showed they didn’t get how far they’d overachiever. But hopefully the clean out can deliver more frank assessment and pathway fwd

What about the discarded players? I think that would be a pretty good team of all the Tigers development system players they let go and then maybe a squad list of the players they kept instead? What do you reckon the odds would be for a game between those two teams 6:1?

Or is that too painful for the tigers fans

TBH – that’s miles away from guaranteed. Their lack of depth is going to hamstring any #1 seed ambitions.

Are they definitely in that top tier assuming Harden rounds back into shape? Sure. but that isn’t a clear #1 in my mind. Harden by the eye test and the numbers looks to be posting his worst ever defensive effort, that’s rarified air (or ocean depth).

This also isn’t a team constructed to mask his weaknesses and maximise his strength like Houston. It’s not like the issues the Miami big three had because each were able to dial it up a little defensively (or in Bosh’s case a alot) that just isn’t in the MO of Irving or Harden.

Maybe he’s had his Grant Hill or T-Mac moment and will try on defence and not pout if his team mate misses a shot that could have been a Harden play. I just don’t see that metamorphosis happening this year given his shape and demeanour.

His blue print was sound and simple. No need to get creative in the NRL when your opposition seems to have a gun pointed at their feet.

But he did seem to get in the way of its simplicity at the back end.

I will caveat this by saying the commetns below are framed from gould from pre Fox every game. I can enjoy life largely without Gould now, it is better and I enjoy the NRL more as a result.

IME Gould did what you are accusing others of to referees on a regular basis, he’s also done it to administrators he didn’t like.

A lot of Goulds comments on such things are either wrong or so exaggerated as to not be capable of engaging in logical debate.

I’ve also seen Gould just talk over people trying to deliver logical rebuttal to save face.

I’ve heard him also deliver homolies on the NRL being above social, legal and medical standards without logic

I think it is entirely illogical to compare the equate the likely consideration and thought process behind John Howard’s government and Phil Gould’s media presence.

I agreed somewhat with the underlying sentiment – it did however feel like I’d stumbled onto a panthers fan for life pod cast instead of the grand final call.

I think the Nets need everything to go right to make this worthwhile after giving up two younger players and 7 years of picks or pick options.

They need Irving to not only come back, but also have undergone chemo therapy to remove the basketball cancer that seems to metastasise every locker room he walks into.

Even then they’re going to have some defensive issues unless Durant is happy to chris Bosh it (he shouldn’t be as he’s the best over all player in that group).

Then add there isn’t any guarantee that they’re the best team in the East, which they need to be to justify the risk of a 7 year draft downgrade.

Every team is an injury to a star player away from a rebuild. The Net’s just won’t have any capacity to rebuild.

It’s not as reckless as the Boston trade but gee it’s following the blue print

I must admit I do find it very odd the way we judge coaches. We all have a level of understanding of the on the field because we’ve seen thousands of hours of it – but we judge coaching without ever really getting genuine exposure to top level coaching.

Winning a grand final is the outcome of a process which is highly variable. If someone is a 3-1 favourite against every other elite team they’ll still not win the GF more often than they do.

If a coach can suddenly make his team better, then he’s been doing the wrong job up until that point unless second gear is a 200+ F/A guaranteed top 4 going against clubs in top gear.

First the caveat that this is all based off Kane Evans paraphrasing, and potentially quoted out of context. None of that lends much reliability.

But if it is an accurate account then I’m worried for the warriors as it is all temporary window dressing rah rah rather than something you can build off of.

For starters the playing group is not going to set up the next 10-20 years of the Warriors this season. That is a ridiculous statement.

Gould himself acknowledged this with his ever shifting X year plan at Penrith. That kind of change happens at the front office level, in recruitment and retention, in development systems, talent identification, whole of system training etc.

Now even in good times that stuff that can’t be done by the players (as Gould has acknowledged time and time again) let alone in one when they are nowhere near their club. Oh and the coaching staff are nowhere near the development players etc. Oh and the restrictions on sport and travel mean recruitment and scouting is limited. But yeah…

Side note: If the NRL were serious about making the warriors whole for this they’d fund a coaching spend for the first two post COVID years to allow them to make up ground on the other clubs.

Only a casual football fan but it feels like if they can use the transfer window to turn him into a consistent top tier midfielder that compliments the rest of the squad then it would probably be wise.

Main rationale for that a) he is a lightning for off field attention, b) he’s had one foot out the door before, sell high rather than risk the timing of his unhappiness and contract year coinciding and c) it’s often posited that his role at Utd isn’t a perfect fit, at his price any redundant production/capability is very expensive a cheaper player better suited might deliver 95% of pogba with money left over to improve elsewhere

All depends on if they can get value though

But then perhaps the cheapest place to get a team of top level statisticians would be India. We also have been keeping ball by ball data for cricket since day dot. There should be better stats on this (you see the odd piece so I’m guessing it is still in it’s infancy and held by the clubs)

It actually took American football a fair amount of time to get on board the stats train after seeing what it did in Baseball – part of that was the strength of the incumbents and the other part was they didn’t have the volume or quality of data.

With only 16 games against uncommon opponents it took them a while to come up with ways to frame the on game action to be meaningful for analysis.

Quick read had 10 losers by more than 12 pts.

Most are second 4 versus top 4 with really poor FA or lightning in a bottle teams that we get excited about (I wrote an article post the roosters loss to STG and needing to be very cautious of “hey we made the grand final optimism”)

Those that weren’t were Manly Storm and Warriors teams of which only the Warriors didn’t keep the core together for a GF win. So 3/4 thumped top sides went on to get the silver ware eventually (though the sample size is too small to tell you anything)

The warriors are the real head scratcher they posted F/A of 234 and 111 in 02 and 11. Even the 2011 number is a continual solid top 4 contender number.

Then they fell off a cliff to 35 and -112 the next year mediocre to terrible team numbers, I know they are the benchmark for inconsistency but gee.

But in summary – no evidence to suggest the GF result kills your team just that FA is probably a better long term projection than finals position

I think your understanding is correct as that it’s how that stat is compiled in other sports, doing it match up, pitch and situationally specific probably gives too small a sample size.

On the shorter bowling I think the post mortem is that the strategy was wrong. But I can see the rationale – trying to create discomfort against set opposition but probably stuck with it for too long.

Plus if the keeper can’t catch – not much point in aiming for the edge 😛

My only worry with that stat (which is way better than what we’ve got so don’t get me wrong – I’ll be downloading the app) is it feels like the a QB expected completion or interception rate – the actual gap between good and great is consistently generating more from the same expected positional outcome.

But that gap is also be affected by the performance of others (drops for both the bowler and the QB). I’d imagine that drops aren’t high enough in quantum to get the law of large numbers effect.

But here that 2 wickets difference probably feels right to his defenders and his doubters probable feel he deserved negative 10 wickets anyway.

I mean out there for us laymen. I’m guessing the teams have it – no point throwing $1-2m at someone unless you know it’s the right someone.

I’m happy to pay a reasonable subscription fee but buying an IPL team might be tough to get past the wife 🙂

I wonder if there are advance stats out there on bowler chance creation.

So anything upheld on a DRS umpires call, dropped catches, mishit air balls etc. Would also be interesting to see the effect on bowling partner chance creation and test who does consistently help the other bowler get people out.

I meant for the worldseries.

Toronto blue jays.

Hey – what about Toronto!

You watched that songs of the 90s as well – breaking out some atomic kitten

I think you might be overestimating the global glory aspect here, rightly or wrongly the club challenge really only piques the interest of the rusted on fan in Australia.

The economic cost benefit is also going to be a head scratcher under the requirements. It would also need a politician with capital to burn given the UK/SA strain they keep banging on about here would see their effigy metaphorically burnt by the media regardless of outcome.

Realistically in the list of stuff we need to try and get happening this is probably a footnote to item #1,286,999,485

We can call off the search we’ve found the last guy in Australia who actually cares what is printed in the physical paper.

If you’re getting offended by what click bait journo’s write in the bottom of the barrel medium of these times then gee mate there isn’t going to be a corner of the world where you feel comfortable.

As opposed to the guy who defends using violence to pver turn democratic process. You know so long as the violent are white.

Right depends on colour and birthplace for you.

The situation might not be as bad, but there is a risk that they used up their emotional resilience last year.

I can see them either leaping forward this year on the slightly better situation or falling in a heap on the back of just not having it in them to suck it up two years running.

As bad as it would have been last year it was a surprise and there also would have been a sense of it’s all for nothing if we don’t put in our best. You can’t go to that well too often. Maybe they’ve got another year of that mind set, maybe they don’t.

If they’re playing this year like football is a chore then they’ll be found out on the scoreboard.

I hope they do fire up and make the best of a bad situation but I don’t think there is any shame if they don’t.