Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:14 am  

tad rhino wrote:

but.
do you trust him to move forward?
spend the huge cap space wisely? he will have an input.
Robert's, olpherts were his signings and both are garbage.
do you get rid and write the season off? I personally think both smith and hetherington should stand aside. hetheringtons last good decision anyone?

Graham - jury is out on Smith - as has proved in Beeston chopping and changing coaches doesn't always deliver the desired outcomes. Leeds are between a rock and a hard place of their own making. If you were an experienced NRL coach would you come to Leeds - its a basket case at the moment. Someone like Rowley could possibly sort it out if you wanted a UK coach.

It needs a DOR who is in charge of recruitment - the coach has to coach the players the club recruits. Coaches don't last as long as players. Youth development/scouting needs a massive overall. There are 19 coaches yes 19 in the youth set up. I know there is a massive love in with Butterill on here but he isn't delivering and this is elite sport.

The most worrying is the lack of development of the players coming into the first team. The likes of Oldeski, Smith, Handley are not developing beyond reasonable SL players.

It should always be evolution before revolution but maybe revolution is what is needed here

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:26 am  

do you trust smith to deliver?
do you trust him to bring the right players in?

if the answers no he has to go now

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:50 am  

If after 14 games in moving Handley to fb is preferable to giving hooley a game even though the backs are shot with injuries, then he's been a poor signing too.

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 7:57 am  

tad rhino wrote:

do you trust smith to deliver?
do you trust him to bring the right players in?

if the answers no he has to go now

I know what you’re saying Tads but Smith really hasn’t had much cap to play with so far.

MacDonald and McDonnell have been good although Nene can be rubbish in D at times.

I don’t know if he had involvement in Sangare or not but I think he’s been a solid signing and just what we needed - mass.

Roberts is still young and Hooley wasn’t a crazy idea as cover. Olpherts is an awful signing.

I think we have to give Smith another year at least to see what he can do with a squad more of his own making. Changing coach again - well who do we bring in and what difference would it make when the squad just isn’t a champion side?

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:16 am  

Smith has created a bi problem for himself now.
I can't see him being sacked mid-season, but he's got to turn things around to have a chance of being here next year.
The honeymoon period is long over and last years GF a very distant memory.
We can't keep saying this isn't his team.
He has to show some basic coaching skills and the ability to prepare a team to put in decent, coherent performances to give us a chance of winning matches.
That's just not happening at the moment. Even in the games we've won, we have been all over the place at times.
We are genuinely going backwards.

We have a massive off season coming up in terms of recruitment, so we have to be sure we have the coach in place who is going to take that forward.
Much more of this over the next few weeks and Smith is ruling himself out of that.
Hetherington will be planning for a change.

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:30 am  

A loss against Wakefield and I think he will be sacked.

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:45 am  

ArthurClues wrote:

You've been right about him all along, Batley. Fair play. He's a genuine liability.

Olpherts is STILL better than Tindall.

What does that say about current depth in the backs....?

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:52 am  

There's no way he'll be sacked this year, and neither should he. We went for bargain-basement signings this year because with the utter shower under Agar we were somehow at the full cap with marquee players on top and yet a rubbish first 17 and zero squad depth. We could argue about some of the incomings, but he had no budget to play with and went scouting the Championship, in some cases just to give him an option other than a 17-year old if someone got injured.

Having said that, he has clearly made some mistakes this year. The soft off-season bit us hard, as did the passive defence, which at least seems to have gone. But he's persisting with the 'best player regardless of position' mantra and it just doesn't work in the key positions. On top of that players seemingly aren't being punished for bad mistakes.

The fact is that at our best with everyone fit we've shown we can probably compete with anybody. But the huge gap between our best and worst is the mark of a poor side, not a good one. Sts (and Leeds) in previous years could cruise through a lot of games and win with plenty to spare because they had genuine quality throughout. We just don't have that. I can't see it changing much regardless of coach unless we make some big signings this off-season and they come off in a way that most of our recent signings just haven't.

In that respect I'd rather trust Smith's judgement than Hetherington, who has overseen an utterly disastrous recruitment and retention strategy for getting on close to a decade now. It'd be unfair to judge Smith's ability there given the restrictions he was under last off-season. I think he has to be given the chance to use some genuine cap space and then be judged on what happens next season.

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:58 am  

ArthurClues wrote:

You've been right about him all along, Batley. Fair play. He's a genuine liability.

As a terrible former winger, I feel qualified to spot a terrible current winger.

Re: MW | Castleford Tigers : Sun Jun 04, 2023 8:58 am  

tad rhino wrote:

do you trust smith to deliver?
do you trust him to bring the right players in?

if the answers no he has to go now

On the evidence of this season no - on last maybe?

We don't know what was said to him re. recruitment - possibly we £150k on the cap - do your best!!