Yes, i meant the equipment thing for me coc is also important! But they need also the equipment. And you need faults to learn from that. Probably the anonym person is just one of them whithout benefits from the new binding. Maybe it is more time needed to try new things. But to say everything went wrong is to early. Think about mattis last season. Also about ville before his injury. He was also jumping with the new binding. You can see at a video on youtube. Ville is jumping with a cam at his ski in klingenthal. And the papers are finnish media. They just write about kalle if they want to. Same with hofer. I think they just write about they favourites and just about guys from the own country.
Ville was not jumping with National team binding (source Pekka NiemelÀ.) He was jumping with commercial binding like all the other top jumpers (source Pekka NiemelÀ in several interviews.) You have to understand that there is two different 'new bindings' in Finland used. One is the commercial binding also other countries use. Other is special National team binding that Matti uses (and maybe now also Olli and Anssi) and Rane used earlier at the season (source NiemelÀ.) Now Rane and Havu are using old bindings (source Rane.) The commercial bindings don't cost that much. It is this own binding project, that is expensive (source NiemelÀ.)
They started it, because they wanted to be forerunners with equipment (source NiemelÀ.) They put heavily resources to that (source NiemelÀ and Tiilikainen during the summer) and hoped it would bring advantage. Till early february, they had made bindings for Matti and Rane in that project (source NiemelÀ.) All the others were using commercial bindings. For Oslo, they were able to make bindings in their project also for Olli and Anssi (source NiemelÀ.)
I agree that this kind of project could be beneficiary on the long run - if they could afford it. But now they had to nix COC because money run out (source Tiilikainen.) It is also said, that next year will also be financially hard so they may need to prioritise even more.
Finnish media mainly writes about what the team gives them. Very seldom they take their own inventive. And that only, if there is something really juicy. If NiemelÀ doesn't mention Hofer when he talks about the bindings and how they develop them with the professor from Tampere etc. they don't write about Hofer, because he is not mentioned. And they certainly wrote lots and lots of him during the summer so it's not because he is Austrian...
The anonymous person telling, that Hofer is not what they expected can very well be one of the people, who, or whose trainees, hasn't been given any benefits from the project (that being anyone but Matti and Rane and their personal coaches.) it doesn't mean it is total bullshit.