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Cam Schwab

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We will probably never know why it was setup this way. One might speculate that Schwab enjoyed this aspect of football & wanted to get involved. Or that the MFC were under resourced so he took it upon himself. Either way he had roughly 4 years to setup a structure & system that was industry norm & failed to do so. His area of expertise does not relate to the football department even though he spent time in recruiting when he was at the beginning of his career. These are some of the reasons why I speculated regarding the Andrews Report as I believe that it would have been critical of his methods. Essentially by having 4 football department members report to him he was taking on the role of CEO & head of football operations. That's my take on it anyway.

In addition I don't believe the FD is inexperienced. Harrington, Viney, Craig, Neeld, Rawlings & Royal have all spent a considerable amount of time in football departments. Although Neeld is an inexperienced head coach granted.

Good points all. I feel like we have an experienced structure supporting an inexperienced head coach (who has significant apprenticeship in coaching), and some inexperienced line coaches. But the 'inexperienced' comment was PJ's, not mine.

I'll be surprised if that question is ever asked/answered of CS RE the set up structure. My intention was just to highlight that the may have been a reason. Someone stated earlier that the winners write the history, and it would be fair to argue that the reason the losers don't right the history is because their methods weren't any good, but in our scenario I think we have a whole pile of issues conspiring to cause us to be where we are (poor football resourcing, large debt, poor senior players, poor culture, tanking culture, long time without success, poor previous coaching and fitness staff, poor organisational structure, death of club president and legend, other external factors - racism etc, media campaign). Poor organisational structure is but one of the problems. I will concede that perhaps better organisational structure could have assisted mitigate some of the other issues, but even if it did, we would still have a range of other problem and probably wouldn't be much better than where we are.

Schwab loved the glory and the theory, didn't seem aware that the players are the reality. Seems to have left a stain of his thinking.

I speculate about how much of this emphasis Schwab invented, and how much he acquired it from those he wanted to be ranked amongst. Maybe just like-minded, all of them dreaming. Understood money and PR, but, at the very least, he embodied and catalysed the cancer at the root of our problems.

 

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