wj
I saw Gaff coaching the backs at Victoria Barracks in closed sessions a few times whist Foley was doing lineout drills and he, Gaffney, was also doing generic stuff near The Loop with the backs.
Hardly any of the sessions of either were high class stuff at VB. I noticed the lineouts in one Tahs game were heaps better than in the practice sessions the previous week though I have no clue what that means. The back practice sessions were generally better than on game day but I don't know what that means either.
Bowen and Mumm looked more like helpers than anything else though they worked intensely with small groups.
But we're talking of about only 10 sessions that I saw in the season.
Gaffney did not end the season with flying colours in my eyes, though obviously I didn't see the whole picture.
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When you have a bad year as a team everyone gets a bit of the shit that is flying around. Its often hard to know who was really responsible for the disasters unless you are close to the team but independent from it. Fans just know that the year is going down the toilet. Knowledgeable fans have a few clues as to why that might be, but even if you asked all the players off the record, I'd bet you'd get a whole range of answers.
But having a year like last year has concentrated everyone's thoughts and I think this year we will know if Gaffney is past it or not. If the backs begin to play ensemble rugby in the Waratah tradition, Gaffney will be the man. If they have another year like last year then he is just a nice bloke who couldn't deliver. The only thing that sustains my hope is that his teams at Randwick in the 80's and 90's did know how to play. They did have the odd good player or two, though.
I still think everything depends on how Bernard Foley goes at 10. If we are to play an attacking brand of football it all hinges on the 10. If Foley gets injured early then it could get very ugly. Our only back-up is Barnes and he is a good NH 10 but he lacks the ability to run the line in an attacking way.
As lots of posters on here have suggested, however, the Tahs did not look fit enough to play a full game flat out last year. So it is somewhat worrying to see that the S&C coach is still on the team. The next few months are probably the key time for team preparation. If Tombleson was to be replaced, it should have happened before the start of pre-season I would have thought.
When you have a bad season, few people understand just how important morale is and just how fine the line between success and failure can be. Had the AR not made the dreadful forward pass decision in the very first game, the Waratahs would have gone home exhilarated with a great win and the Reds would have slunk away dejected. No one knows how that would have played out - perhaps the confidence of the team would have allowed them to go on and build through the season rather than spiral down as it did. The first four or five games next year will be very very important for squad morale. If the players can see something building then the uplifted morale will help the squad drive improvement. The most important thing the head coach can install in the team is belief.
