Rebuilding

[Alan79]

There has been a lot of talk about the erosion of our clubs culture this year and to an extent i think it's been happening over aboput the last 10 years.

To me the best time is now to see the club get back to their roots. We built our reputation and culture by establishing a platform for young players to excel at our club. A strategy that showed everyone within the club that success at every level was important. By having a lot of junior success we were able to entice great juniors here and to inspire some loyalty and pride in them. I think that our culture declined slowly for a few reasons. We bought in some outsiders in positions of power who used the club as a stepping stone to move on to higher profile and probably bigger money jobs. While they were here they allowed some brilliant junior coaches and equally brilliant talent scouts to move on. From what i hear now through this forum the culture in the lower grades has turned caustic. And to continue the destruction of our formula we hired a coach that showed zero faith in juniors to an extent where we made a few decisions to recruit players mid season to fill gaps. In the past we rarely shopped for established stars, but we were very adept at picking up players who deserved chances to shine in the top grade and made stars of them.

I see us at the start of a process of rebuilding not only a team but a system by which we can instill pride in the club at all levels.

Step one is to get our top side performing in a way we can be proud of that juniors will bust a nut to be part of.
Step two is to get our lower grades coaching in order to develop the talent we have here right now.
Step three is to give pathways to the best of our juniors in order to display to future recruits that they can go on to bigger things here.
Step four is to show to the rest of the league world that we can turn players with potential into stars.
Step five is to get back to only recruiting unknown players that can live up to our standards.

In order to do all that we need to know that our head office are here for the long haul and that they love the club and aren't here for their ego or to develop their own careers in the corporate world. I honestly don't know that Dib and associates are those people or not. It's a huge shame that some greta club people have had to leave through various reasons over the years. As much as Mcintyre and co screwed up by cheating the cap, you know they loved the club and made the mistakes they did on the asumptions that it nwas what was best for the club.

I like that we're bringing back some good ambassadors from our past playing groups to help give youngsters guidance. It's hopefully enough to remove some of the caustic atmosphere that is supposed to be plaguing the junior ranks. We've also made some changes to junior coaching and recruitment. So hopefully that begins to pay off over the next couple of years too.

It will be interesting to see how the board elections play out. I do think that Dib and co have started making some of the steps needed to get our culture back. But they only seem to have done so after the fans applied a lot of pressure. I\m not sure about the business acumen of all those on the rival ticket but i do know there are some people there who I think have genuine loyalty for the club.

All facts considered I think that we may be in the early stages of becoming the league powerhouse that we have been in the past.

 

[Chris Harding]

There has been a lot of talk about the erosion of our clubs culture this year and to an extent i think it's been happening over aboput the last 10 years.

To me the best time is now to see the club get back to their roots. We built our reputation and culture by establishing a platform for young players to excel at our club. A strategy that showed everyone within the club that success at every level was important. By having a lot of junior success we were able to entice great juniors here and to inspire some loyalty and pride in them. I think that our culture declined slowly for a few reasons. We bought in some outsiders in positions of power who used the club as a stepping stone to move on to higher profile and probably bigger money jobs. While they were here they allowed some brilliant junior coaches and equally brilliant talent scouts to move on. From what i hear now through this forum the culture in the lower grades has turned caustic. And to continue the destruction of our formula we hired a coach that showed zero faith in juniors to an extent where we made a few decisions to recruit players mid season to fill gaps. In the past we rarely shopped for established stars, but we were very adept at picking up players who deserved chances to shine in the top grade and made stars of them.

I see us at the start of a process of rebuilding not only a team but a system by which we can instill pride in the club at all levels.

Step one is to get our top side performing in a way we can be proud of that juniors will bust a nut to be part of.
Step two is to get our lower grades coaching in order to develop the talent we have here right now.
Step three is to give pathways to the best of our juniors in order to display to future recruits that they can go on to bigger things here.
Step four is to show to the rest of the league world that we can turn players with potential into stars.
Step five is to get back to only recruiting unknown players that can live up to our standards.

In order to do all that we need to know that our head office are here for the long haul and that they love the club and aren't here for their ego or to develop their own careers in the corporate world. I honestly don't know that Dib and associates are those people or not. It's a huge shame that some greta club people have had to leave through various reasons over the years. As much as Mcintyre and co screwed up by cheating the cap, you know they loved the club and made the mistakes they did on the asumptions that it nwas what was best for the club.

I like that we're bringing back some good ambassadors from our past playing groups to help give youngsters guidance. It's hopefully enough to remove some of the caustic atmosphere that is supposed to be plaguing the junior ranks. We've also made some changes to junior coaching and recruitment. So hopefully that begins to pay off over the next couple of years too.

It will be interesting to see how the board elections play out. I do think that Dib and co have started making some of the steps needed to get our culture back. But they only seem to have done so after the fans applied a lot of pressure. I\m not sure about the business acumen of all those on the rival ticket but i do know there are some people there who I think have genuine loyalty for the club.

All facts considered I think that we may be in the early stages of becoming the league powerhouse that we have been in the past.

I sincerely hope so. If we don't get the pants sued off the club we may be in the stages of a phoenix like rise; but a lot of things have to align. Nonetheless I feel positive for the first time in a few years; even re-joined for 2018.

 

[LordSidious66]

Simple if we play with a much better game and plan and have no injuries, we could give the competition a better shake. I am actually excited and I am feeling a very positive vibe about next year.

 

[Oatley Dog]

I understand the sentiment Alan, but in the practical world it just can't happen. Our 'juniors' will increasingly be imported from overseas and interstate and while we could do worse than develop them once we have them the reality is that the FG side is going to continue to be a separate entity to the rest of the teams. I am confident that we now have in place the right sort of recruitment team to identify and capture the juniors we need to feed the senior teams some players but the harsh reality is that we will, as will all other clubs other than Penrith, continue to buy talent in as we go along and that's OK. It is a professional sport these days.

 

[Alan79]

I sincerely hope so. If we don't get the pants sued off the club we may be in the stages of a phoenix like rise; but a lot of things have to align. Nonetheless I feel positive for the first time in a few years; even re-joined for 2018.

I'm not all that concerned over the potential legal actions against the club. I doubt that Hasler would get close to the full contract value awarded in his favor even if he gets a good result in court. And the Fifita article seems like another Weedler beat up in an otherwise slow news week for a lazy NRL "journalist" (to use the term loosely). And while any payout figure will be a financial burden for the club, I think we're in a good position to manage given that we've got a successful leagues club. I'm mostly excited about the prospect of us becoming a club that can produce most of our own stars again over the next few years.

Simple if we play with a much better game and plan and have no injuries, we could give the competition a better shake. I am actually excited and I am feeling a very positive vibe about next year.

It would be great to see the team show some desire to not only win but to display some dominance. I'm feeling pretty positive about next year, but my big hope is that we're moving towards another era of quality on field performance from the NRL down to our youngest junior sides. It would be great to know that our fill in players will be quality in a few seasons. We've seen enough years where we've had to shop outside the club for some players that aren't that outstanding and probably not a great deal better than juniors we would have produced in quantity for the first 25 years or so that i supported the club. I think Noad started our downfall and we've probably followed a finance first motto since he was here rather than a football first one.

 

[Alan79]

I understand the sentiment Alan, but in the practical world it just can't happen. Our 'juniors' will increasingly be imported from overseas and interstate and while we could do worse than develop them once we have them the reality is that the FG side is going to continue to be a separate entity to the rest of the teams. I am confident that we now have in place the right sort of recruitment team to identify and capture the juniors we need to feed the senior teams some players but the harsh reality is that we will, as will all other clubs other than Penrith, continue to buy talent in as we go along and that's OK. It is a professional sport these days.

I know that clubs are increasingly reliant on recruiting NRL ready talent these days, but it does become a lot easier to bring promising youngsters on board if they know that we do a better job of nurturing their talent. Some of our greats like Steve Price, Jason Hetherington to name just a couple were players who were from interstate rather than Belmore locals when we bought them to the club. But in recent years our recruitment has tended to be more along the lines of chasing some pretty ordinary players as position fillers when i think that realisticaly we could have produced players as good as a few of the wingers like wright, browne and Junior Tia Kalifi. It kind of sends a message to youngsters that this isn't a great place to stay on if we're going to recruit average players like those and fast track them into starting spots rather than gamble on players that have earned opportunity here. I don't expect this type of rebuild to be an instant thing, but it would be nice to know that we're headed in the right direction to rely heavily on producing our own talent in 75% of cases or more.

 

[doggieaaron]

Too long alan

 

[David holland]

Des Hasler came in and had a instant impact and should be credited for that, the failure he had too much control and the final say which in the long run killed our club, the powers to be are at fault and should be removed from there positions

 

[Nasheed]

You know I hear this talk over and over constantly again like the dogs have something special and unseen that other clubs don’t have or want.

What club DOESNT strive to be tough, aggressive and skilful!?

Show me a team that says they want to play peaceful and meddly

 

[Kenya]

Not expecting too much.
Really great to have real Bulldogs running the club again.
Tbh thats already a big reward in itself.
To see us play with passion and spirit next year will be great.

Not a fan of the Foran decision - not confident we have the halves solution and I suspect like some of you that we might be a bit thin in the forwards.
Really chuffed about Mbye at fb, will be good to watch.
It will be a good year if we start to look like the Dogs again and play with pride.