So I guess we could say that in the eyes of Wayne Bennett Damien Cook isn’t good enough either?
I seem to remember the talk in the media by former players was positive around Lachie after his first year. Coming first up to round 11 there was no issue then. Sure he had his shortcomings, but we beat the Panthers, Broncos and Storm in back to back to back weeks with him as our halfback.
For whatever reason the wheels fell off. Our forward pack that was dominating so much was now struggling. Our great defence disappeared. The shortcomings on Lachie were getting exposed.
But he wasn’t alone there. Cody too was struggling. Funny enough the blame for that seemed to fall on the shoulders of Lachie rather than Cody himself. See where I’m going with this?
The talk by many including a former player/coach was it was all the halfbacks fault. I really didn’t get that as there were a couple of games where we scored 30 points and still lost. How could we blame the halfback after those losses?
We saw what happened when JD finally dropped Lachie and brought what a few thought was the savour. The funny thing at the same time Lachie actually looked much better and doing things we didn’t see in first grade. Up until he was injured.
All in the same time we were still losing.
Then we saw JD sacked. Our form started to turn around. It took us a few weeks, but you could see improvement there. Then we went on a run.
So could it be that Lachie wasn’t the problem, but the coach? Hard to say. But Lachie was decent enough his first 18 months.
Wayne will make the tough decisions. Some we won’t like. Funnily enough it was Braith who made the move of wanting to look elsewhere.