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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 2809295, member: 1899"] When Wayne Bennett took St George to a premiership in 2010, everybody made the mistake of thinking he was a miracle worker. They thought he had the secret recipe to ensure a premiership success at every club he went to and when the Knights made the Top 8 in 2011 there was this presumption that they would take the next step in 2012. What the experts and the fans didn't realise is that Newcastle weren't St George. The Dragons had everything in place to be a premiership side, the Knights didn't. For years, the Dragons were accused of being perrenial under-achievers and were one of the most inconsistent sides in the competition, beating premiership favourites one week only to struggle against celler dwellers the next. Wayne fixed that by getting the Dragons to focus on their defence and keeping the offence as simple as possible. He got the Dragons to play to their strengths, which more often than not was all they needed to do. At Newcastle, the situation was far more complicated. The entire club needed to be fixed from the ground up and Wayne was in over his head. If he could be faulted for anything, it was trying to do too many things at once. He wanted to fix the development pathways, he wanted to restore the culture of the club by bringing bunch of senior players and he also tried to transplant the success he had at St George by recruiting former players from that 2010 squad. It was just too much to handle in such a short space of time and it all went belly-up. While his stint can only be described as a failure, there was plenty of blame to go around. Not only was 2014 a series of unfortunate events starting with the Russell Packer drama and ending with the ASADA suspensions of Smith and Snowden but as mentioned the players weren't being paid. If anything Nathan Tinkler deserves the lion share of the blame. He came in and promised the world, only to under-deliver and butt heads with Wayne. In hindsight there were so many warning signs from the Kade Snowden situation to Tinkler's form at the Newcastle Jets but Wayne stuck it out. Still, before things turned sour under Stone, there were plenty of experts suggesting Wayne had left Newcastle in decent shape. The emergence of talent like Gagai, Leilua, Rochow, Mata'utia, Mamo, Tapine, Levi etc. left Stone plenty to work with, the problem was he struggled to get the best out of them. After letting them throw the ball around for the first month of the competition, the Knights went into their shell after a poor loss from the Dragons and they didn't have the structures or mental fortitude to recover. A lot of players went backwards under Stone and all the effort that went into developing talent went to the wayside under his tenure. Meanwhile Nathan Brown made the deliberate decision to completely 'rebuild' the side by throwing a bunch of kids into the deep end to sink or swim. Most of them have sunk and it remains to be seen whether Brown is the right man for the job. So far he's gotten a free pass because the press feels he's at least trying something different and he's been transparent with the community. However, when you only manage to win one game all season questions have to be asked. If you ask me, the Knights issues can be traced to Brian Smith and his inability to develop local talent and insistense to bring in bit players. Players like Ben Cross, Matt Hilder, Marvin Karawana, Keith Lulia, Shannon McDonnell, Ben Rogers, Mark Taufua, Danny Wicks, Chris Houston etc. may have performed well under Smith but they were never going to win a premiership and Smith's inability to get the most out of local talent like Jarrod Mullen hurt him. I liked that segment on the Matty Johns Show. Matty has been making these digs at Wayne and hiding under a veil of comedy to try and hide his real emotions. It was good that he just came out with it, said what he wanted to say, albeit it felt like an opening paragraph and if he was taken to task I believe he'd be exposed. Also...I've seen Bennett criticised for signing players like Clint Newton and Michael Dobson, but if you followed the club you'd know those weren't the only signings being made. Under Wayne, the Knights brought in a lot of talent to their NYC side. Granted these players didn't kick on, but what they managed to do was help the likes of Mata'utia, Tapine, Levi etc. to develop. Again, under Stone this type of development fell by the wayside and I can't help but feel like we would have seen more rookies emerge under Wayne. I mean you look at the Broncos. Most 'experts' would tell you they only signed Darius Boyd, Adam Blair, James Roberts, Korbin Sims, Benji Marshall etc. under his watch but they're not paying close attention to the NYC. The Broncos have been a lot more active in their second tier recruitment, which was one of the biggest killers in their 2013 season signing the likes of Tevita Pangai Jr, Herman Ese'ese, Tautau Moga, Jamayne Isaako, Marion Seve, Payne Haas among others. Those type of signings weren't happening before Wayne came with the only real exception being Daniel Vidot and Stewart Mills. [/QUOTE]

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