Fuck RH. You seriously are the quintessential pessimist.
I've come around to you a bit but I simply feel compelled to ask, is it tiring?
There's a good chance in replying to Scrubbers post to chat about the top performers from the Reds 2015 squad but you zero in on the one line about the coach issue that has been flogged to death and write the same sort of thing you always do.
I admire your passion for righting the ship and bringing the Reds back to glory but I just don't understand why you constantly focus on the negative.
You and I are probably chalk and cheese and I can appreciate that. I am an optimist generally and hopelessly romantic; probably to a fault. Which is why I just don't understand what drives you. I love Rugby and constantly looking at the negatives would just about drive me to drink. Each to their own but I guess.
Sorry for the weird rant. :-/
Let me tell you a little story.
Not too long ago, my family cash sponsored a passionate young Reds fan who resides a long way overseas to fulfil his dream to come to Brisbane, see Suncorp and Ballymore, take in some Reds games and, ideally, meet QC (Quade Cooper).
This bright, engaging young guy thus fulfilled this dream (his family joined me in part-funding the long trip here), I took him to all these things and places, we specially went to Ballymore on a fan day and he got to meet QC (Quade Cooper) and others. During half time in a game, he met RG and and yet more Reds' players. Whilst here, he stayed with my family.
Since 2010, I have taken numerous tracts of Reds Ruby and Platinum Members tickets plus loads of extra tickets for friends and family, taken whole tables of 10 at numerous Reds Gala Balls and other QRU and Reds functions, bought loads of their merchandise, and today I am off with another passionate rugby fan to the QRU's RWC lunch, at $250 per head no less.
So Scoey you look at the keyhole here and all that unsettles your affection for the Reds, but you don't see the room on the other side.
Part of the problem of your unbalanced character assessment of me is that you clearly lack either longevity here, or a good documentary memory.
I am driven by the study of facts and factual outcomes. When in 2010-12 there was much to praise regarding Link, the Reds team's performances, the new QRU's business acumen, the then-excellent Reds marketing and so on, I praised to the rooftops on GAGR all of this, and many many times. (Other posters in that period accused me then of excessive praise, as it happens.)
But when the facts and factual outcomes turned negative not only once, but multiple times over multiple periods and I saw the deep signs of institutional arrogance, insularity and decay within the Reds and QRU management systems (all of a type like that that sent them broke only a few years ago), I am going to critique that and heavily as that is absolutely what it deserves.
When I see genuinely positive signs of coaching and managerial competency and leadership excellence being expressed and having positive results within the Reds and QRU, I shall immediately return to congratulate and support those making that happen. Right now, I see very few such signs.
Standing by and and driven by some sentimental fairy tale that just because I'm emotionally attached to the Reds means that by some grant of magic they are truly wonderful deep down and should be held to a kind of unthinking adulation, well, to me that is a fairy tale that's fine for others, but by indulging it, history clearly shows, necessary managerial change won't happen that way.
Indeed unthinking loyalty and adulation is precisely what indentures and underwrites complacency within leadership groups that, based upon their conduct and their delivered outcomes, we should no longer trust or support.
