Round 15: South Sydney Rabbitohs vs Gold Coast Titans :(

[Ryan]

Prince is our captain, our leader and playmaker.
You don't need to keep stats to know he's not fulfilling his responsibilities.
How many times did the Titans really threaten their line or make a clean break.
I've said it before, we are nothing without Friend and Rogers. That was our real strength last season. It was the combo of Prince and these two that made us effective. Prince is lost without them and devoid of any original ideas.

One player can't threaten the line, one player can easily be covered in defense and even targeted. What were the other 16 players doing when Prince got the ball?

How do you expect the line to be broken simply by giving the ball to the halfback? Where were the support runners, decoy runners and options available to Prince? What else could he do other than kick across for a 50%er?

Everyone on this forum raves about Presto's ability and leadership - Well he was in the #6 for 80mins last night, yet not a mention of his input, performance or leadership.

Doesn't matter who the player is, what position he plays or whether he has a 'c' next to his name or not - he's not gonna win the game on his own, there are 17 blokes on that field that need to put their hand up....

[Coaster]

I think it is Princes fault but not for the reasons stated above.
It is Prices fault because he is Captain and should be demanding more from
The players around him. Him and Preston are trying to run every play, which is killing us and Zillman is the reason our defense is so poor.

Hindy even mentioned how quiet they are, prince should be directing plays without getting involved. He should be telling the forwards exactly where he wants them and leading them. Instead they are watching him and trying to run decoys for him.

Someone needs to put a rocket up Zillman, it is his job to direct our defense, and motivate the forwards and whole line. Standing at the back day dreaming is pathetic

There a bunch of individuals ATM. No communication at all.
Prince and Zillman should never ever shut there mouths.

[teke]

Yeah it looked like poor communication.

Those midfield kicks can be pretty difficult, it's hard for the winger to get there in time. I wonder if Tomane knew it was going to be so short when he called for it.

They're certainly not the first centre-wing pair to get burned by Dave Taylor...

They were embarrassed and they wont let that happen again. I think this pairing is vastly under utilised, if they saw more ball in hand it would help the team out alot.

[TitansFan]

Another disappointing performance last night, and a lot of discussion on here about which players are letting the team down, and the usual suggestions of massive re-shuffles which just wouldn't work any better.

But there is an ELEPHANT in this room which very few of you want to tackle. The coach.

I know that John Cartwright is the nicest guy in the world, and personally I'd love to see the team winning for him. But I'm a proud Gold Coaster, and I'm sick of my home town being represented by teams which don't win anything except wooden spoons.

Great coaches like Bennett/Bellamy/Sheens can take a rabble, give everyone a job within a good game plan, and create a winning team. The 2011 Titans are a team full of very talented players, but it seems to me that they don't have any confidence in themselves or each other, and it shows in their performances. Is it time to question if they are being well coached?

I'm not calling for Cartwright to be booted, but maybe he needs a good assistant with some fresh ideas or something? I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for saying that, but I've never actually cared whether the team are called Giants, Seagulls, Chargers, whatever. And I don't care how nice a guy the coach is either. I just finally want this city to have a team we can be proud of.

[Steelers]

I'm not calling for Cartwright to be booted, but maybe he needs a good assistant with some fresh ideas or something?

You aren't the first person to suggest this, and I doubt you will be the last. It is something that needs to happen.

[DIEHARD]

I think it is Princes fault but not for the reasons stated above.
It is Prices fault because he is Captain and should be demanding more from
The players around him. Him and Preston are trying to run every play, which is killing us and Zillman is the reason our defense is so poor.

Hindy even mentioned how quiet they are, prince should be directing plays without getting involved. He should be telling the forwards exactly where he wants them and leading them. Instead they are watching him and trying to run decoys for him.

Someone needs to put a rocket up Zillman, it is his job to direct our defense, and motivate the forwards and whole line. Standing at the back day dreaming is pathetic

There a bunch of individuals ATM. No communication at all.
Prince and Zillman should never ever shut there mouths.

I think that has alot of truth to it, I also agree that Prince doesn't hav e many options because we are nearly devoid of runners and decoys. And we have the firepower of a pop gun as a result.

[titansrawesome]

Another disappointing performance last night, and a lot of discussion on here about which players are letting the team down, and the usual suggestions of massive re-shuffles which just wouldn't work any better.

But there is an ELEPHANT in this room which very few of you want to tackle. The coach.

I know that John Cartwright is the nicest guy in the world, and personally I'd love to see the team winning for him. But I'm a proud Gold Coaster, and I'm sick of my home town being represented by teams which don't win anything except wooden spoons.

Great coaches like Bennett/Bellamy/Sheens can take a rabble, give everyone a job within a good game plan, and create a winning team. The 2011 Titans are a team full of very talented players, but it seems to me that they don't have any confidence in themselves or each other, and it shows in their performances. Is it time to question if they are being well coached?

I'm not calling for Cartwright to be booted, but maybe he needs a good assistant with some fresh ideas or something? I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for saying that, but I've never actually cared whether the team are called Giants, Seagulls, Chargers, whatever. And I don't care how nice a guy the coach is either. I just finally want this city to have a team we can be proud of.

this this this, no one wants to say maybe our gameplans or coaching is wrong, ill ask you all this question if tim sheens/bellamy/bennett/hasler was coach instead where would we be? i would say top 4 easily to each of them, we have the talent we just aren't being coached right especially if you look at our attacking contrast from now to 07 when we were the entertainers and we smashed parra by 28 and we were brilliant in attack and good in defense except for the injury toll we had. but whenever me or titanic or the quoted individual say this stuff you guys always say the same old thing ' you think you can coach better'. im sure carty is a brilliant guy but nice guys sometimes finish last (no pun intended)

[eelectrica]

Our two main coaches are both former forwards, We need to add a halves/backs coach to the list I feel. Someone who can look at an opponents defence and dismantle it.
At the moment a blind man could defend against us because we're so predicatable. The only surprise is where Scotty Princes kicks are going to end up. They could end up anywhere and do.

[Chaos]

I think it is Princes fault but not for the reasons stated above.
It is Prices fault because he is Captain and should be demanding more from
The players around him. Him and Preston are trying to run every play, which is killing us and Zillman is the reason our defense is so poor.

Hindy even mentioned how quiet they are, prince should be directing plays without getting involved. He should be telling the forwards exactly where he wants them and leading them. Instead they are watching him and trying to run decoys for him.

Someone needs to put a rocket up Zillman, it is his job to direct our defense, and motivate the forwards and whole line. Standing at the back day dreaming is pathetic

There a bunch of individuals ATM. No communication at all.
Prince and Zillman should never ever shut there mouths.

If you want an attacking structure...you need to train for it.
These guys a mirroring their training drills...if they weren't, the coach would drop them.
If they are, then coach needs to address his attacking style.

[Titanmudgee]

We can all speculate about all the reasons why we are going so poorly. Aiming at certain players, the captain some even blaming the coach. I actually believe the reason for this years terrible season comes down to one thing. At the start of the year almost half the squad were coming off contract at the end of 2011 season. If anyone hear talks with any of the guys in one of these positions you would know as much as me that they are so so distracted from thinking about playing as part of a team but more focused on playing and making an impact as an individual and trying to secure there future. As a result there is very little team thinking/bonding going on but more a bunch of individuals doing whatever they can midweek after training to sort out next year.

I would love to hear others thoughts on this. I actually really think the NRL has to review the whole way and time that contract discussions ate conducted mid season and even the fact that players can change clubs right up to 30 June as per taga.

I know for a fact the majority of out players have close to zero confidence in themselves and that is mostly due to the fact that carty constantly plays games about who is playing and where right up to an hour before kick off most weeks. So many of them are so busy thinking about themselves, will they play this week, will they have a contract next year that they have compleltey forgotten to play for each other. They are a very disunited bunch just ask taga it really didn't take much for him to leave and was a classic case of being caught up in cartys u/16's coaching games.

Thoughts?

[SunnyCoastTitanFan]

We can all speculate about all the reasons why we are going so poorly. Aiming at certain players, the captain some even blaming the coach. I actually believe the reason for this years terrible season comes down to one thing. At the start of the year almost half the squad were coming off contract at the end of 2011 season. If anyone hear talks with any of the guys in one of these positions you would know as much as me that they are so so distracted from thinking about playing as part of a team but more focused on playing and making an impact as an individual and trying to secure there future. As a result there is very little team thinking/bonding going on but more a bunch of individuals doing whatever they can midweek after training to sort out next year.

I would love to hear others thoughts on this. I actually really think the NRL has to review the whole way and time that contract discussions ate conducted mid season and even the fact that players can change clubs right up to 30 June as per taga.

I know for a fact the majority of out players have close to zero confidence in themselves and that is mostly due to the fact that carty constantly plays games about who is playing and where right up to an hour before kick off most weeks. So many of them are so busy thinking about themselves, will they play this week, will they have a contract next year that they have compleltey forgotten to play for each other. They are a very disunited bunch just ask taga it really didn't take much for him to leave and was a classic case of being caught up in cartys u/16's coaching games.

Thoughts?

These are some very interesting ideas, and a good way of looking at it in my opinion. Most people would usually think that if they are playing for their contract, they'll play well, but in a situation like this, where there are so many players coming off contract, you could potentially get a bunch of players playing for themselves, rather than as a team, which harms the flow of the game and causes players to stray from the gameplan.

I reckon this could be avoided with the time limits of player contracts to be more spread out, so there is a maximum of say 5 players (a mix between young and experienced players) off contract per year. This could give management more time to focus on who they want to resign and who they want to replace. This could also be beneficial in a situation such as say if we had won the comp last year, then the market value of all our 2010 players would have gone up, making it more unlikely that we could keep a great deal of them as well as sign all the players we that have for next year. Well that's my opinion of it anyway.

[teke]

We can all speculate about all the reasons why we are going so poorly. Aiming at certain players, the captain some even blaming the coach. I actually believe the reason for this years terrible season comes down to one thing. At the start of the year almost half the squad were coming off contract at the end of 2011 season. If anyone hear talks with any of the guys in one of these positions you would know as much as me that they are so so distracted from thinking about playing as part of a team but more focused on playing and making an impact as an individual and trying to secure there future. As a result there is very little team thinking/bonding going on but more a bunch of individuals doing whatever they can midweek after training to sort out next year.

I would love to hear others thoughts on this. I actually really think the NRL has to review the whole way and time that contract discussions ate conducted mid season and even the fact that players can change clubs right up to 30 June as per taga.

I know for a fact the majority of out players have close to zero confidence in themselves and that is mostly due to the fact that carty constantly plays games about who is playing and where right up to an hour before kick off most weeks. So many of them are so busy thinking about themselves, will they play this week, will they have a contract next year that they have compleltey forgotten to play for each other. They are a very disunited bunch just ask taga it really didn't take much for him to leave and was a classic case of being caught up in cartys u/16's coaching games.

Thoughts?

You raise a good point and to a degree self confidence in some players is non existent. Without getting into too much debate there are a heap of off contract players who have been told they wont be getting resigned for next year and they just dont care.

[Ryan]

We can all speculate about all the reasons why we are going so poorly. Aiming at certain players, the captain some even blaming the coach. I actually believe the reason for this years terrible season comes down to one thing. At the start of the year almost half the squad were coming off contract at the end of 2011 season. If anyone hear talks with any of the guys in one of these positions you would know as much as me that they are so so distracted from thinking about playing as part of a team but more focused on playing and making an impact as an individual and trying to secure there future. As a result there is very little team thinking/bonding going on but more a bunch of individuals doing whatever they can midweek after training to sort out next year.

I would love to hear others thoughts on this. I actually really think the NRL has to review the whole way and time that contract discussions ate conducted mid season and even the fact that players can change clubs right up to 30 June as per taga.

I know for a fact the majority of out players have close to zero confidence in themselves and that is mostly due to the fact that carty constantly plays games about who is playing and where right up to an hour before kick off most weeks. So many of them are so busy thinking about themselves, will they play this week, will they have a contract next year that they have compleltey forgotten to play for each other. They are a very disunited bunch just ask taga it really didn't take much for him to leave and was a classic case of being caught up in cartys u/16's coaching games.

Thoughts?

I agree, I posted the same thoughts a few weeks ago.
Follow the link to my quote, there is a thread on this:

The stats aren't the reason, they are the result of the reason. We are playing the same team as least year bar Rogers, and have gone from the top of the table to the bottom. A team full of professional athletes do not lose their ability so quickly. Team spirit on the other hand - can be lost quicker than a NSW points lead.
I'm guessing team morale has taken a hit with so many off contract and the flow on effect of signings and non-signings.... Just my 2 cents....

[Titanic]

Yes sure, this is a contributing factor but the gun needs to be pointed equally at those who are signing the cheques and those who are earning them.

If we as fans and members are to take this as a reason then the effort put in should be reflected by (1) their selection and (2) the culture managament provides.

My point being, as has been stated many times; players come and go in professional sport BUT the club has a responsibility to create an environment for all those contracted to perform until they go ... not just slack off towards the end of their time. Player accountability has to be assured and that IS the job of the management, coach and captain.

[teke]

My point being, as has been stated many times; players come and go in professional sport BUT the club has a responsibility to create an environment for all those contracted to perform until they go ... not just slack off towards the end of their time. Player accountability has to be assured and that IS the job of the management, coach and captain.

Much easier said than done.