Re-reading this in January and now with TH announcing his immediate retirement. I agree totally with your assessment about the drop in popularity Mr Webster would have suffered had he dumped Shaun and made him an injury/form back-up half. I think Webby took the players' words for it when they said they wanted to fight through the injury and get back on the field ASAP, which is fair enough. The most cynical logic for doing this is that worst case Webby could have fronted the media and said "Hey, I just trusted SJ that said he'd get better, you'd have to ask him why that didn't happen!" , which also would have annoyed the beJaysus out of a whole heap of Warriors fans.
Begs the question: Should a coach take an aging player's word for it that they think they can come back from an injury, especially if it's a recurrance or just doesn't seem to be getting significanly better? Should the player's seniority/level of respect they're held in by the club and fans allow some leeway when Webby thinks "Mmmm. Nah. I think you might be gone, mate!"? Same with Webby making positional or bench/starting changes to what the player does going forward...