BuzzerBeater Forums

Hi all,
Apologies for not responding sooner – there was a death in the family and it took my attention away. I had requested a discord invite earlier, but by the time I got around to joining, the link had expired.
Anyway, I want to make it absolutely clear that I have no intention of harming our current coach, Dublinman. I fully respect the fact that he's dedicating his time and doing his best for the team – that’s commendable.
One of the reasons I started thinking about a possible coaching change (and I want to stress again, this is not meant as a personal attack) is that his club team hasn't had much success either. They barely made it past the Top 32 in the Cup – which is basically the number of active teams – and haven’t made much of a mark in the Super League either. Ideally, the NT coach should have some kind of winning pedigree. (For context: I’ve played before, and in my first full season back I’ve already reached the Top 4 in the cup.) But I won’t ignore the fact that he has brought one important thing to the national team: stability.
That said, there have been quite a few puzzling decisions around squad selection. There are several players who should’ve been included but weren’t – and others who were picked without merit. The same goes for lineup choices. I’m familiar with many players’ skills, and I also look at ratings. But let’s forget about past seasons and talk about this one.
We’ve played two matches so far – both against much stronger teams. One of them we gave a scare, so on paper it might look like we did well. But in my opinion, this season has been a disaster so far – from almost every perspective.
Israel – Let’s be honest, even their weakest players are arguably better than our best. And yet, we still tried to push for a result? Why? We had zero chance of anything, and all it did was hurt our team spirit from the very start. That was the only “achievement.”
Then came Latvia, and the poor decision against Israel came back to haunt us. Latvia is also a much stronger team. But with just a bit of tactical thinking, it was obvious they would rest against us – a much weaker side – after their opening match against Slovenia, which looked like a full vs. full or normal vs. normal clash. They were always going to take it easier against us to recover for tougher games ahead. As a result, they didn’t push hard and we almost pulled off a win. Maybe we even could have won – had we not blown everything in the Israel match. A massive tactical blunder.
One of my biggest issues over the past few years has been the complete lack of imagination in the rotation. We have several multi-skilled players, yet everyone’s played the same position every game – no variation at all. It feels like there’s no opponent scouting, no creativity. This season we’ve seen the exact same rotation every match, and I honestly started wondering if the squad was just set on auto-pilot after the election. Or is that actually the tactic? What’s the point of friendlies if we don’t use them to test different setups? But instead we just do the same thing.
Speaking of rotation: I don’t know the skillsets of Bradley or Haverty, but I did see O’Rourke when he was transferred and I’m convinced he’s the best C in Ireland (unless we’re specifically going for a close-range offence). C is clearly his best position. Yet he’s being played as a PF regularly – and underperforms there. The engine doesn’t favour him at PF. Has nobody noticed this?? Again, there’s zero experimentation here, which I don’t understand.
Now we have Alexey Lyons in the rotation (also as PF), and based on his skills he shouldn’t even be near the court – maybe only if we’re really desperate for rebounds.

And the most baffling thing: our highest-paid player, Cummins, isn’t just not starting – he hasn’t even been named for a match yet? This isn’t last season when he was being sold for $1,000 a week and in poor form. The U21 coach has managed him well. It makes no sense. If he had played, the Latvia game could have gone differently again.
The squad composition is also poor. McGee and O’Hagan are not ready yet. Keeping “mascot” players like Costello last season was also questionable. Holmes has no place in the squad based on skills – he should never be on the court in a competitive match. I assume he’s there just because he plays for the coach’s club, which isn’t ideal. In fact, it might be better to leave the last roster spot empty at the start of the season in case of injuries or form drops. The end of the roster should be made up of specialists – someone like Sylvester Cooney, who could come in for specific scenarios as a backup for O’Rourke and shut down opposing centers. That would be a much more useful option than Holmes.
Players like Magauran, Castle, and McEvoy are already strong and developing well – they deserve a place in the squad now and even more so going forward.
Finally, let’s talk about the future. Building for the future should absolutely be part of the NT coach’s responsibilities. The U21 coach’s job ends once a player ages out –while post-U21 tracking could be done, it isn’t. I personally manage several NT-calibre young talents, and there’s been no communication about coordinating training plans with the NT setup (which, to be fair, Dublinman may not have much experience with). But without that kind of cooperation, we’re building on sand. Just picking whoever is available and hoping for the best won’t work long term.
Maybe I’ve worded things a bit harshly – if so, I apologise, it’s not meant to offend anyone. But honestly, these first three weeks have been below zero in terms of performance. I’m really struggling to understand what’s going on.