Edinburgh match

[mike909]

Mike my worry is that we are seeing an example of jorno not wanting to upset DoRs or coaches because their livelihood depends on their goodwill tor access to players, coaches, facilities for news and stories. We saw this with the media's reaction to the Saracens cheating..very muted,
I could easily have missed it, but you seen one Bobby Bridge personal opinion piece on the Saracens cheating?

I haven't, I value Bobby's opinion, and he is I believe trying to show the range of issues - and he's right about injuries and losses of players, but I don't think his emphasis is correctly placed. He's better placed to see day to day stuff - and easily could be right. But I find the lack of comment on the coaching input naive. I wouldn't like to go further than that.

[wasps]

I know that some will feel that I'm overly optimistic and/or naive, but I do agree with the comments about us not being far away from putting winning performances together.... The signs are definitely there in every game recently, if you want to believe in them.

The problem is that we need it to happen soon (i.e. very soon)
It won't do us any favours for things to finally click in March.



We need a platform, and for that, we need a pack.
Our front row and back rows are a match for virtually any team. We need some fit locks and we should be able to build that platform.

Without that platform, our under performing backs have little chance to build a consistent plan.


This euro competition has come at a good time given that we can write it off, but we need some fit 2nd rows, ideally including Joe and I really do think that you'll see a winning team

[HDAWG]

We know we're not far away from working, but same can be said about Newcastle last year.

It's just everyone else is further ahead.

[westwaleswasp]

Mike, I'm not saying I disagree, but continuing the Eddie Jones theme, lots of people said his coaching had run it's course in 2016/17, only for him to turn it around this year.

Admittedly, he refreshed some of his coaches, but was widely criticised for doing that.

Wasps too have changed coaches, sometimes by choice, sometimes not.


There's obviously a number of high profile things that have worked against us, and I don't know enough about coaching to really have an expert opinion.
I'm completely on the side of Dai that we didn't want to just jump and get any random defence coach when Danny Wilson went to Scotland. However, it's frustrating that it's now been a lot of years without a full coaching setup.

Eddie's team was well off the pace in the 6n- losing to Wales without scoring a point in the second and blowing a 30 point lead at home to Scotland. He had a good world cup, the main focus, but the actual 6n was pretty poor, aside from a stuffing of Ireland, who were awful in 2019.

 It is hard to draw analogies between international and club sides, Eddie was focussed, probably too focussed in my view, on the WC. There is a natural cycle there, which does not exist at club level, the WC is a natural focus that club sides don't have, and had Eddie not had the WC in mind he would have looked to evolve the team earlier than he did, rather than wait for results to fall apart and being forced to. At club level relegation is the only worry, one that forces changes on clubs.

[HDAWG]

www, completely agree with your second paragraph, +1

[mike909]

WWW - re Eddie - if he was focused on the RWC - for me at least - he'd have made changes a year earlier when performances started to fall off. He responded to the crisis in 2018 by recruiting a new attack coach who (look at the attack in SA and AI's) turned around England going forwards and had a decent RWC in the end.

I do think that coaches have a shelf life - international or club. There's a difference in the ability to control some events - but just like when managing teams at work  - there is a point at which your message and way of working has to change or your people just look vacant when you start to speak about another sales target

I don't know if Wasps' coaching team has got to that point - but as I've suggested - it would surely be naive not to consider all options. Even if we beat Quins (I'm pretty sure we wouldn't if they play like at the w/e) we're still only doing as well as Newcastle, last season, after 8 games.