I know its early in the week but I feel like having a rant.....
So Chris Sandow reckons Parramatta can go from bottom of the NRL ladder to being a real premiership threat in 2013.
"I can see it happening next year for us," Sandow said.
"When I started at Souths, we had blokes like Jason Clark, Chris McQueen, Dave Tyrrell and Nathan Peats, and look at those guys now.
They're playing like they've been doing it for years.
"Here at Parramatta, we've got Ryan Morgan, Matt Ryan, Joseph Paulo, and we're building something really good here.
Well in my humble opinion one of the reasons Souths has gone so well this year is that they have a decent halfback!!!!!!!! And a bunch of people playing like a TEAM in a team game. They also have a good coach by the look of it which brings me to my next point.......
Now they are saying that Ricky will go and be their coach next year....ummm shall we have a look at his outstanding record in recent years - so he did well at the Roosters for a few years early on - they also had arguably one of the best players going around in a key position and a great team (probably stretched the salary cap too a bit I reckon) yet with a great team in 2005 and 2006 he did poorly. He then goes to the Sharkies and does nothing special and gets punted 18mths before his contract is up. Once more leaving in less than acrimonious circumstances. Rep wise he won one Origin series back in 2005 then headed off to coach Australia where they lost the world cup to the mighty NZ team - I recall he lost the plot afterwards and gave it to the referee boss at the hotel before having to stand down. Nice form. He has been back coaching Origin now for 2 series and still not delivered.
So yes he was a great player in both codes, yes he had good success early on in his coaching career but since then he has pretty much done nothing despite having some good players around him. His teams also playing boring football in my eyes.
Hope this has not come across to one-sided - I have given him some credence for past performance.....but he has done nothing for years and does not have a good track record with officials and administrators. I would think that this is a classic case of his PR team having done an outstanding job the last few years in re-building the RS brand and the management of a club being caught like a rabbit in the headlights after sacking 2 coaches in 2 years with big payoffs - one after he got them to the grand final the year before.
Seems like a marriage in heaven if you ask me

Rant over.