TalDog
Kennel Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2011
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PAUL KENT, The Daily Telegraph
an hour ago
PITCHFORKS to the left, torches to the right.
The mob assemble for Des Hasler, whose record at the weekend fell to 11 finals appearances from the past 12 seasons. That’s a hanging offence when mob mentality takes over.
And so with a grand flick of the hair Hasler prepares to fight for his job as the great disturbance around the Bulldogs boardroom, with elections in February, threatens his future.
A week ago Bulldogs captain James Graham sat down on NRL360 and spoke with true passion about Hasler’s credentials as coach while he wondered about the energy being put into tapping Hasler out of his job after one failed season.
Graham, a thinker, quoted a book called This Is Your Brain On Sports that detailed the ancient phenomena of baseball manager Connie Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 seasons.
Hasler is fighting for his job.
Mack won just five World Series, had a losing record overall, and yet the ball club so appreciated the value of what he did with what he had that they refused to run him out of town even though his last World Series came 20 years before he retired.
At 88.
Nowadays, Graham wondered, everybody wants success instantly.
Nobody is prepared to give the benefit of time or perspective to Hasler’s stint, both of which would save his job.
To understand what Hasler has achieved and where Canterbury are can be done only through the full breadth of his tenure.
To isolate the merit of his coaching to merely this season is shortsighted and the kind of narrow thinking that presents a danger the Bulldogs’ faithful have not fully considered. Namely, they might actually get worse and not better.
Hasler made the grand final his first season at Canterbury in 2012, losing to Melbourne, after they finished ninth the season before. He was hailed a saviour, a worker in small miracles.
Bulldogs fans clapped their hands and waited.
Hasler got there again two years later, going down to South Sydney this time, and the feeling was the Bulldogs were oh so close.
The Bulldogs have played in two grand finals under Hasler.
In hindsight that hope, the small margin of improvement needed, was where Hasler went wrong.
But is that enough to run him out of town?
In the two seasons since that grand final the Bulldogs have made the playoffs both years but got eliminated easily both times in the first round of the playoffs.
Throw in last weekend’s loss to Penrith that eliminated the Bulldogs from this year’s finals series for the first time since Hasler arrived and the smell of blood drifts through Belmore.
Suddenly, the roster is revealed as stale and lethargic. And it is the coach’s fault so surely he must go.
an hour ago
PITCHFORKS to the left, torches to the right.
The mob assemble for Des Hasler, whose record at the weekend fell to 11 finals appearances from the past 12 seasons. That’s a hanging offence when mob mentality takes over.
And so with a grand flick of the hair Hasler prepares to fight for his job as the great disturbance around the Bulldogs boardroom, with elections in February, threatens his future.
A week ago Bulldogs captain James Graham sat down on NRL360 and spoke with true passion about Hasler’s credentials as coach while he wondered about the energy being put into tapping Hasler out of his job after one failed season.
Graham, a thinker, quoted a book called This Is Your Brain On Sports that detailed the ancient phenomena of baseball manager Connie Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 seasons.
Hasler is fighting for his job.
Mack won just five World Series, had a losing record overall, and yet the ball club so appreciated the value of what he did with what he had that they refused to run him out of town even though his last World Series came 20 years before he retired.
At 88.
Nowadays, Graham wondered, everybody wants success instantly.
Nobody is prepared to give the benefit of time or perspective to Hasler’s stint, both of which would save his job.
To understand what Hasler has achieved and where Canterbury are can be done only through the full breadth of his tenure.
To isolate the merit of his coaching to merely this season is shortsighted and the kind of narrow thinking that presents a danger the Bulldogs’ faithful have not fully considered. Namely, they might actually get worse and not better.
Hasler made the grand final his first season at Canterbury in 2012, losing to Melbourne, after they finished ninth the season before. He was hailed a saviour, a worker in small miracles.
Bulldogs fans clapped their hands and waited.
Hasler got there again two years later, going down to South Sydney this time, and the feeling was the Bulldogs were oh so close.
The Bulldogs have played in two grand finals under Hasler.
In hindsight that hope, the small margin of improvement needed, was where Hasler went wrong.
But is that enough to run him out of town?
In the two seasons since that grand final the Bulldogs have made the playoffs both years but got eliminated easily both times in the first round of the playoffs.
Throw in last weekend’s loss to Penrith that eliminated the Bulldogs from this year’s finals series for the first time since Hasler arrived and the smell of blood drifts through Belmore.
Suddenly, the roster is revealed as stale and lethargic. And it is the coach’s fault so surely he must go.
