To me the most mystifying component of the Genia shift is this: Genia is a smart fellow, he'd know the history of the Force, he'd know the criticality of who's to be the next coach there, he'd know that just another Force Mk IV string of star pearls model without coaching excellence of the right type could make a mockery of his decision to go there. But outwardly at least, no new coach has been appointed in Perth. Top players moving from a winning club to a losing one with no foreknowledge of the latter's coach identity is almost unheard of.
Gagger reported on last night's blog that the Genia signing was to be subject to Cheika coming to Perth. But that's not what has happened as yet, but this notion makes a lot of sense if you agree with the analysis above re how Genia would assess the wisdom of a move west.
It could well be that the Force are close to signing Cheika but that somehow Genia or his manager got ahead of themselves in telling the Reds he was likely to leave, the Reds pre-empted the play with their announcement, but Genia has not made his signature unconditional as no Force coach has as yet been signed. So, it's possible that the whole par-larva is just a bloody mess of informal statements that should never have leaked until they were made formal by means of finalized unconditional contracts.
I only speculate here as I think it's extremely odd that Genia would transfer with no knowledge of a Force coach to be. One other possibility is that Pocock and/or Rugby WA have offered Genia full consultation and veto rights over the next Force coach, that might make sense of this and be explaining variable behind the scenes.
