You make a fair analysis, not much of which is necessarily wrong. I wouldn't say that these issues necessarily reflect the coaching prowess of Cappy, as much as it represents a lack of cohesion with the team we are fielding. The Mason Lino - Ryan Hoffman connection was on point most of the night, but Tomkins didn't show the awareness to wrap around which may suggest he didn't suspect that was the intentions of Lino's pass. At the same time, you'd expect a play of the "caliber" of Tomkins to be more aware of whats going on - although Tomkins was there to receive the pass on a few occasions, it was all to slow and if Ryan wasn't shut down, Tomkins sure as hell was. You also have to consider Lino never have played a game with this group before last week, which can also contribute to cohesion issues. May sound like excuses, but if we are gonna dig into the coach than analyzing the other scale of things is just as viable in this case.
We can hammer Cappy for being unable to bring out the best in the group of guys he's been forced to field since
Shaun Johnson went down. I suppose us thinking we were going to make some sort of miraculous run to the finals with an injury toll such as what we have, in hindsight, was wishful thinking to say the least. Comparing ourselves to other, lower-placed teams such as Titans, Knights, Panthers etc. makes matters worse because they are winning games or playing with heart and passion while we are being left in tatters. "McFraud" is also a young coach in his own right. He still has a shitload of figuring out to do, and its fucking tough he's had to do so through the circumstances - any team who fields a predominate-reserve grade level team will get fucked week in week out. See what that had done to Manly and Penrith this season. Storm without their big 3 = shithouse. Cowboys without JT barely hang on. We can strive to expect more from our depth players but they reflect how disastrous our development/recruitment within our club has been over the last 3-4 years. Areas which Doyle is already addressing.
That isn't a reflection of Cappy - that's a reflection of the club being run to shit by past management. It's easy to say "if we didn't have injuries we'd still be in the same position" because we are playing so bad its impossible to think otherwise, but if Cappy was able to consistently field our top side (Leuluai, Hoffman, Thompson, Manu, Tomkins) to build momentum at the right time of year, I seriously believe we would have made top 8 easy. Cappy still has plenty to prove though - we should save the criticism until next year when he has a full arsonal of talent at his disposal and (hopefully) a credible mentoror and/or improved coaching staff around him (decisions I hope Doyle makes).
