Monday 23 April 2012

Far from being God, is Steve O'Connor ultimately responsible for the fans' unrest?

Another huge, although predictable defeat. At the beginning of the season if you had said that we would have lost 62-0 to Saints, whilst disappointed, I don't think many of us would have seen it as any sort of an indication of how our season was going. 

Heaven knows, we've seen good Widnes teams go to Saints and come away with their tails between their legs. The 56-0 defeat of 2002 comes to mind; this coming off the back of an incredible 5 match away winning run. 

However, a quick look on Twitter or the Trust in Widnes websites, shows that Widnes fans are incredibly unhappy, not just with this result but with how the season has gone. The St Helens defeat was most disappointing because it represented another false dawn. Just last week, an incredible ending saw us nearly pip St Helens to a victory and whilst few fans got overly excited, most hoped that it represented the turning of a corner. Unfortunately, it appears that it did no such thing and if anything, represented the reality that St Helens were in second or third gear for the cup game.

As with most defeats in this manner, the blame game starts. Most fans apportion their blame to Betts, Cullen or a mixture of both. Some still continue to blame the situation and remain adamant that we are performing at an expected level, especially given the injuries that we have. However, perhaps unusually for a sports club, almost nobody blames the Chairman. This seems odd, seeing as though he is the person who has the ultimate say. It would of course be strange to blame our on the field performances on O'Connor, but should he take a degree of blame for how the fans are feeling? 

Is Steve O'Connor responsible for fans' unrest?

Disclaimer
The reason most Widnes fans are reluctant to criticise O'Connor is because of what he has done for the club in the past. Not only did he save the club after the horror of going into administration, he has turned the club into a professional outfit off the field. In previous years, whilst we had good levels of support, we were ran poorly. Aspects like the club shop, the clubs image and marketing were amateurish and very much secondary to what happened on the pitch. Therefore, not only did he save the club but he turned it into a better sports club than we ever imagined. Without him, it is hard to imagine that we would have won the Super League license. As one of the fans who travelled home from Leeds in 2007 wondering whether we would have a club again, nobody is more grateful than I am.

Perhaps more importantly, our continued license is viewed as being very much reliant on the continued presence of O'Connor at the club. This means that some fans are reluctant to criticise O'Connor out of fear that he will leave and we would end up losing our Super League place. This is an understandable position but not one that I subscribe to; I think O'Connor is streetwise enough to understand that he is likely to face criticism as a high profile figure of a sports club. However, this desire not to criticise O'Connor often spills over into something else. He has been built into this infallible figure and we increasingly hear comments saying that we should have faith in what O'Connor is doing and implying that we shouldn't question it. In this way, some fans almost treat O'Connor as a godlike figure, someone who knows better than we do. It reminds me of the familiar saying of the religious, 'the Lord works in mysterious ways.' Not surprisingly, I don't subscribe to this. 

A risky decision
For me the current unrest comes largely down to one decision; the appointment of Denis Betts as Super League coach in 2011. However, not necessarily for the expected reasons. 

When Denis Betts was appointed in 2010, most Widnes fans were willing to give him a chance. The fact that he was only given a years contract, suggested that this appointment was a trial for a Super League contract. This seemed reasonable but inexplicably he was then given a 2 year Super League contract after just a handful of what fans perceived as poor performances. This was a very unpopular decision and and in hindsight was handled very strangely. Why wasn't he just given a 3 year contract in 2010 if the clubs on field performances in 2011 were going to be irrelevant? Maybe O'Connor saw something in this early stage that he felt justified a contract extension but this still seems like an odd way of handling the situation.

This decision had repercussions into the Super League season. We finished 2011 in poor form and meant that many Widnes fans went into Super League unhappy with the choice of coach. This inevitably dampened enthusiasm and will have likely had an effect on Stronghold numbers. The bigger problem came when the season started and the performances weren't at the expected level. Because of his lack of experience and poor prior record, fans haven't been willing to give Betts the benefit of the doubt. When the club claims that better recruitment wasn't possible; that we have been unlucky with injuries and that it is a steep learning curve, it has been increasingly hard to accept that these are the real reasons behind our problems. 

I actually feel a bit for Betts in this respect. It is eminently possible that everything the club is saying is correct. However, he isn't going to get the benefit of the doubt because there is no positive reason to. This is why Steve O'Connor should have gone with a coach with more experience and a better record. That way, fans would have been more likely to accept the issues. If for instance John Kear was saying that recruitment was difficult, fans would have been more likely to trust his opinion because he has recent experience of recruitment. In reality, Betts has done nothing wrong but have a go at a difficult job. Steve O'Connor took the choice to tackle Super League with an inexperienced and already unpopular coach. If we were always going to be facing huge defeats as the club now implies, then does it make sense to put that pressure on the shoulders of an unproven coach? It was clearly a risk and one that hasn't paid off judging by the level of unrest of Widnes fans; I honestly cannot remember it being so high. 

What needs to be done?
Whether or not Betts is doing as good a job as anybody and admittedly I don't think that he is, I think that Steve O'Connor needs to accept that he was the wrong choice and replace him. In his last interview, O'Connor said that it would be pointless to change coaches this soon into a 3 year plan. However, the fans need a reason to trust that a long term plan will come good and it is the sheer fact that we have no reason, that is causing this level of unrest. Of course, there would always be some unrest if we were losing, but even the most respected and reasonable fans have no faith in the current system. There has to be a reason to believe other than blind faith. This unhappiness is starting to spill over into fans threatening to cancel their Stronghold memberships or even boycott games until a change is made. If we replaced Betts and saw no improvement then the club would be justified. Even so, it would provide temporary optimism which is desperately needed. It is hard to imagine that things could get any worse when you have lost your club record defeat. 

The timing cannot be more crucial. We cannot rest on our laurels and think that we have a great deal of time to build. We we will be finalising our license applications in just 2 years time. This might seem like a while, but realistically it is the rest of this season, next season, and the first few months of the 3rd season. If we continue as we are and then recruit poorly again next year, we would likely see a reduction in Strongholds for next year. This would mean that we would likely suffer lower crowds and these two years would form the majority of the evidence for our 2014 application. 

What makes this worse is that despite my protestations about how 14 is the only workable number for licensing, there appears to be a tide of opinion moving towards 12 Super League clubs. Unless we get things right soon, we would clearly be in the running to be dropped. We need to be able to show what we can bring to Super League in this relatively short window. 

Whilst O'Connor is currently still viewed as a hero, how would he be viewed if he oversaw our transition back to the Championship and blew probably our last shot at Super League. Come on Steve, do the right thing. 


No comments:

Post a Comment