I think Pay did his bit. But it was time to move on. Otherwise we'd have been St George with Mary and lost 10 years because he didnt have the team, or he was hard done by with injuries, or he is an old boy so deserved respect.
Fact of the matter is we have Averillo with a dozen or so games (and maybe 1 in the spine), we have wakeham with about the same. Cogger probbaly got 25 or so games, Harper got 2, and we failed to give Meaney any quality time at fullback in a abysmal team to see if he could develop (funnily when he was dropped to the wing he was finally hitting his straps).
Instead we were giving time to Zelezniak who isnt a fullback and never will be, gave time to hoppa who is just way way way too slow to be a fullback. We played smith at centre even though we didnt have any winger at all. We put 35+ games into Lewis who seemed out of his depth about 10 games in. And we kept on giving game time to Crichton, Holland and Montoya (no surprise that 2 are gone as soon as Barrett arrives, and I think Crichton will soon follow).
So to say that Pay would have done well and built this team is a bit rich. I think he is a nice person, and definitely put his all into the role. But there is no harm to say thank you for your time Dean, thank you for the sacrifices you have made for the club, but we needed a new direction and a new age approach, which i think even before a tackle is made in anger we have achieved with Barrett.
We struggled for 3 years with pay, but more importantly we failed to see if Averillo could be a Fullback, we dont know what Wakeham is capable of, Cogger only got a handful of games in a row before constantly getting dropped. So the best man to take us into a new era and a premiership contender is definitely not Pay, but infact Baz