You’re missing a vital part of the equation - what happens off the field. Ciro obviously thought the way Ray behaved and trained, and mentored the younger guys was worthy of club captaincy. It’s hard to know exactly what’s gone wrong to change that, but it seems like he pulled the wool over their eyes in some way. It could be as simple as him buying into Ciro’s vision to begin with, but as the season went on the tough training became too much.
I’m not convinced Ciro is the coach to take us back to the top, but I don’t think intensity and toughness is a bad method either. One questionable tactic I recently discovered though, which was kind of surprising, was that they do a full game training 2 days before the actual game. Now just as an armchair coach that seems crazy to me. This was on a Bulldogs official video about elite pathways for girls that was released a month ago. As part of the program the girls got to watch this practice game. Ciro told them that they want to play at full or close to intensity or something like that and that some guys were surprised by it. I can’t remember exactly, but it was very eye-opening.
