I think it was more that Fearne wasn't using him to finish games that was the problem. In his first season with the Taipans, Craig was on court for the majority of games at the end and quite often would play major minutes despite Weigh starting. For some reason, last season Fearne seemed to have the shits with Craig from the start and showed little confidence in him. I think the couple of games before the Xmas break, when Fearne chose to not use use Craig a lot and kept him benched at the death (plus all of OT in one of them) was the straw that broke the camels break for Craig. I know he had made up his mind at the XmasNew Year break that he wouldn't be returning.
When Weigh went down injured and Craig was basically the only option at the 3 after the XmasNew Year break, he played exceptionally well and displayed the form that he is for Brisbane now. In fact, he was close enough to the Taipans best player in that 2nd half of the season. He did have 2 ordinary games but one of them was the last game of a streak of 6 games in 16 days that the Taipans had, where Craig had played major minutes in the first 5 of those games and was simply stuffed. The other was the last game of the season in Townsville in which noone played well (after losing all chance of making the playoffs by losing in NZ a couple of days before).
I thought Fearne handled Craig poorly for the whole of last season. Even when Craig was playing well in the 2nd half of the season he still would quite often strongly admonish him for what he felt he had done wrong rather than acknowledge that he had been playing well. In a tv interview at the end of the season (when asked if the imports would be returning) he said both Stark and Craig had only shown glimpses of their best, which may have been true for Starks but was a ridiculous statement to make about Craig given his 2nd half of the season. Fearne did say later he was interested in getting Craig back but that was never going to happen from Craig's point of view.
Although I feel we miss Craig's rebounding, I have to agree that Edwin is looking very good. His test will be to keep it up on a consistent basis. He does strike me as a player that can be a bit hot and cold with his shooting but even if that is the case he will still contribute strongly with his defensive efforts.
I know it's early days and a long season but the Taipans are starting to look very good. Trice and Jawai are still the keys. We may well have won that game last night with a fit Trice in the team.
