I'm very, very afraid that we may well continue with the same personnel. It makes no sense at all because there simply is no way to explain this crash and burn, that would whitewash current coaches, and that they try tells only, that there is not any learning going on. According to Pekka (today), this season was because of Rane and Hapa quitting and bad luck with injuries. But when has Finnish jumping made any sense? So I'm afraid, that there will be no personnel changes, Pekka may still have Kojo backing him up and that is it.
Despite personnel factors there are some very important things to consider. Urheilulehti had a great article about what has went wrong lately. And also I think those things are maybe the most important things right now despite who will be a headcoach. If it's Pekka, I really hope he is more willing to take a hard look into the mirror in more private setting than he is in public (in this two years he has never publicly admitted even one mistake of his own, only blamed others.) Like many Urheilulehti's ski jumping articles, it's plausible to assume that the sources for the information are some prominent Finnish ski jumping coaches. Main things in the article are:
-When injuries start to accumulate, it usually means something is wrong in training. Not trained enough, trained wrong or unstable training. Also not rehabing well enough. Injuries do happen, but when there starts to be a lot more of them than others have, you are doing something wrong.
-Last summers training went wrong. Everyone but Anssi went worse in every way. And Anssi did train separately from A Team's program. He trained a lot of balance, basic athletic skills, versatile training. Other A Team trained for their jumping test.
-Summer competitions were blowed again. No interest from the A Team, national level jumpers jumping instead of A Team, no interest, not deemed important.
-Not giving any chances for the national level guys to challenge A Team, not giving them chances to compete anywhere (and yeah, Finns and CoC
)
-Not seeing that no one else is any more having big separation between training season and competing season. Training so much physical side during the summer that technique doesn't hold. Very old-fashioned training method. Every Finnish jumper also being totally screwed with their technique and timing every year come the winter. Putting physical test scores in front of keeping technique together and then needing too much training jumps from the snow before being able to put technique back together again. For that, the timetable doesn't give them enough time, because there is competition every weekend. Others keep their technique first in the mind also during the summer and have much less need for training jumps when the season starts.
These things are not so much about the personnel, they are about the culture. Rovaniemi-model (well, Lapin Urheiluopisto-model to be exact) seems most promising right now. Lahti and Puijo have failed big time. If Pekka continues as a head coach, is he able to see this and learn?