Why this decision frustrates me as a Rebels fan so much
To me it looks as if we don’t know what we are trying to achieve
I know this is talked about a lot more in the AFL in terms of a win now phase or a development phase
When we sacked Dave Wessels. To me it felt like we realised that we weren’t where we needed to be and we had to take a step back and look to develop some talent
We saw that with Gordon in Super Rugby Trans Tasman and the potential he showed was one of the few positives in the last few years of supporting the Rebels
On top of that all the decisions we then made in the off season about graduating young blokes from our academy and looking to grow from within looked like we were a side that knew we had to take some time to develop the squad.
Fast forward to the start of this year, we go into the Reds game knowing it would be a hard ask to win up there. But you still hope you are pleasantly surprised, unfortunately we were not and it was a pretty grim night at the office. As much as that was disappointing and it did hurt to lose the way we did Ioane, Nu’u and Tonumaipea showed a bit of the bench and provided a little hope.
Then you get to selection night and Gordon is dropped for To'omua who has failed over an extended period to be the player we need at 10 and it feels like the focus is back on winning in the now and not focusing on development. If our focus is winning every week we are about to go 0-7 under Foote so he is running out of time
Furthermore I feel like the biggest faults in our performance last week was with game management and that falls more on To'omua than it does on Gordon. To'omua as a senior player and the goal kicker surely would have had some input on if we should take the 3 or go for 7