
Again you aren't entirely wrong, but you put a fit and firing McRae or Kingsley in to the coaching box and things definitely would have been totally different.As I've said elsewhere, the best list does not necessarily mean the most experienced, and experience (multiple pre-seasons building up the resilience needed to get through a full season + finals) is required to ultimately be successful. Then you've got the luck of who is injured and who isn't - soft tissue injuries can be fixed through conditioning, but the injuries that our players had were nothing to do with that.
You put a fit and firing Dixon, McKenzie, Lycett, Marshall and Finlayson up against Brisbane and GWS instead of a side that is hobbling to the finish line, and things would have been a lot different. Imagine if in 2013 or 2014 we were missing the equivalent of those players leading into finals.
There's no shame in doing everything you can and not getting there, and you have to address injuries and missing players, but good teams address all areas of weakness. Our coach is a massive weak spot in this club.