So, basically (once the profanities are complete), he took a £100K hit to play at another club where he'd share the shirt with another well paid (albeit retired) international but (once all else is completed) get a pay rise.
"He left to play more rugby"... where have we heard that before?
A certain hooker left us to go to Clemont Auvern as he was not getting picked ahead of a guy who coaches at Northampton now!!
Players leave for all sorts of reasons, get over it, like everyone if you leave your job / die, the company / team carries on, no one individual is bigger than the company / team from tea boy to the CEO.
Castro's outburst takes about 1% of the gloss away from a fantastic victory. Shameful behaviour from a self-styled "fat Italian". No-one at Leicester has the right to "walk" into the first team, and those that can't accept that, can go.....and of course they do! Goodbye!!!
I personally think that overall, our management of players is good - but, what do I know?. We rarely know what really goes on, and rarely get both sides of the story. However, the Club is not managed by imbiciles.
I could agree with you...but then we'd both be wrong.
I think the Castro situation wasn't the happiest of departures and the relationship with Cockers had clearly broken down. Shame he felt the need to come out with that tirade, best done in private or as a cold statement without the expletives if aired in public, perhaps in an autobiography.
Did he leave just for the money? - Probably not but if you decide to move on of course pay is a major consideration. As an international he needed to play move.
He may not have taken to the idea that he was our second best tight head, however he should have played more - just because Cole is a fantastic prop doesn't mean he should be played all the time. He will (and did) get injured if he is over played and I for one think he was carrying some sort of injury for some time prior to breaking down. The lure of the Lions may have influenced that perhaps. Certainly yesterday's Cole was the old one - utterly destructive, in a way we had not seen for a year or so prior to the injury.
Whilst the temptation to play Cole all the time may be great it has to be tempered by the potential for injuries and the need to get and keep Balmain on form.
Well Phill, if you think Tigers man management is good, have a yarn with Lewis Moody. Better still, read his book.
No one in the 55 years I have been associated with the club was a more determined
Club loving Tiger than Lewis. He epitomised everything that was Tigers.
He had green white and red stripes through his body.
After all he did for the club in a splendid career, through our best modern day successes, he was treated appallingly by the club and by RC in particular.
Even though he was the then England Captain, he was humiliated and left the club
he loved (and gave his all for), a sad and bitter man.
There were some stupid comments on here at the time about "not good business" to keep him as he became injury prone. Ignoring the fact that he got those injuries fearlessly diving among the feet of monsters for the teams'good. A family man who thought
his service to the club was appreciated, not just by the supporters but the management as well.
That he, the iconic Tiger, was treated so shabbily was not lost on the rest of the playing staff. The "something up" at Tigers was imo in no small measure a
reaction to his treatment.
If you want, as I hope we all do, our teams to really get stuck in on the field, they should not have the handicap of Lewis's treatment in the back of their minds.
When RC recently talked in an interview about how well the club look after their players, I can only imagine how well that went down in the Moody household.
To balance out some of the not so favourable comments it is worth noting that an equally iconic Tiger - Marcos Ayerza - described Tigers as "the best club in the world" when he recently signed a new contract.
As always these matters will divide opinion. Some players will feel hard done to when not getting the game time they feel they merit. However the Tigers' way has always been that a player should "fight" for the shirt and when that player performs better than the present incumbent they become first choice. Dan Cole and Tom Youngs are 2 examples. There is no automatic right to selection. Long may this continue.
A spin off debate is whether player x is performing better than player y. As memebers of this forum we may have opinions, informed or otherwise, on the relative merits of the players in question but that is all they are opinions. Selection decisions are the province of the coaching team and they are best qualified to judge as they have the inside knowledge from working with the players on a daily basis. They have to make the difficult decisions - is player a ready to return after injury, does player b need a rest, is player c carrying a niggle with which he could play but the bigger picture demands he is rested, would player d strengths be unsuitable for the game plan to be used against certain opponents etc, etc. Ultimately if the selected team does not perform then the coaching staff lose their jobs as happened recently with Paul Burke and before him Marcello Loffreda and previously Dean Richards.
The Tigers' performance yesterday illustrates that we should keep faith with the coaches and players we have. Imagine how that team might play with one or 2 big ball carriers like Manu, Logo, Slates, Loamanu and Bai available to punch holes and make space for the likes of Niki Goneva. I for one can't wait. In the meantime more of the same please Tigers especially against Toulon next week and Saints after that.
Tigers for the premiership and European Cup. Get behind the team and make some noise!!
Smudge wrote:Well Phill, if you think Tigers man management is good, have a yarn with Lewis Moody. Better still, read his book.
No one in the 55 years I have been associated with the club was a more determined
Club loving Tiger than Lewis. He epitomised everything that was Tigers.
He had green white and red stripes through his body.
After all he did for the club in a splendid career, through our best modern day successes, he was treated appallingly by the club and by RC in particular.
Even though he was the then England Captain, he was humiliated and left the club
he loved (and gave his all for), a sad and bitter man.
There were some stupid comments on here at the time about "not good business" to keep him as he became injury prone. Ignoring the fact that he got those injuries fearlessly diving among the feet of monsters for the teams'good. A family man who thought
his service to the club was appreciated, not just by the supporters but the management as well.
That he, the iconic Tiger, was treated so shabbily was not lost on the rest of the playing staff. The "something up" at Tigers was imo in no small measure a
reaction to his treatment.
If you want, as I hope we all do, our teams to really get stuck in on the field, they should not have the handicap of Lewis's treatment in the back of their minds.
When RC recently talked in an interview about how well the club look after their players, I can only imagine how well that went down in the Moody household.
But his fitness and injury issues were a problem. Unquestionably. And he was on a whacking great contract to boot.
Talk to me about the long and distinguished spell he had at Bath which proved us wrong to release him.
Smudge wrote:Re George Ford,
When you have a diamond in your club you are absolutely stupid to let him go elsewhere.
He should have been given a decent three or more year contract long before his father went to Bath.
In wendyball terms it was like Man United letting George Best sign for another club in the days before he established himself in the first team.
He was the young European player of the year for heaven's sake.
We all new he was going to be a great player.
He should have been so tied in to a contract at Tigers, there was not a cat in hell's chance
he would go to Baaarth or anywhere else.
This is what annoys so many of us. Inept man management.
We should all know how effective contracts are when a player wants to leave. Have a look on this thread.
I am neither clever enough to understand nor stupid enough to play this game
Lewis Moody was on more money than his contribution to the club at the time warranted, was he prepared to take a shorter lower paid contract to carry on playing for the club he loved?, or did he want to earn as much as was possible.
The same with Dan Hipkiss, Tigers is a business for good or bad any player who does not share the managements idea of their relative value is free to leave and sign for whatever they can get, do not talk of loyalty or we owe this or that player a living for giving them the opportunity to do what they love doing on the biggest stages. It saddens me that Lewis is bitter, he was and is a tigers legend but was he worth a great big slice of the cap when he went, honestly he was not and his time at Bath bears witness to that.
BengalTiger wrote:Lewis Moody was on more money than his contribution to the club at the time warranted, was he prepared to take a shorter lower paid contract to carry on playing for the club he loved?, or did he want to earn as much as was possible.
The same with Dan Hipkiss, Tigers is a business for good or bad any player who does not share the managements idea of their relative value is free to leave and sign for whatever they can get, do not talk of loyalty or we owe this or that player a living for giving them the opportunity to do what they love doing on the biggest stages. It saddens me that Lewis is bitter, he was and is a tigers legend but was he worth a great big slice of the cap when he went, honestly he was not and his time at Bath bears witness to that.
I suspect, on re-reading, it was the manner of the 'interview' as much as anything, RC silent and MOC giving it some (as he was apparently prone to do). Moody clearly found that offensive - I am sure a chat with Wheelbrace would've sweetened the pill instead of being told by a foul-mouthed Ozzie 'farewell'.
Leicester Tigers 1995-
Nottingham 1995-2000
Swansea (Whites) 1988-95
A game played on grass in the open air by teams of XV.
mol2 wrote:I think the Castro situation wasn't the happiest of departures and the relationship with Cockers had clearly broken down. Shame he felt the need to come out with that tirade, best done in private or as a cold statement without the expletives if aired in public, perhaps in an autobiography.
Did he leave just for the money? - Probably not but if you decide to move on of course pay is a major consideration. As an international he needed to play move.
He may not have taken to the idea that he was our second best tight head, however he should have played more - just because Cole is a fantastic prop doesn't mean he should be played all the time.
.
Castro still had plenty of game time at Tigers and if he wanted to start every week for his international prospects, he would have gone to Treviso, rather than Toulon, where a certain Carl Hayman also fancied a game.