Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:09 pm  

lefty goldblatt wrote:

....am I missing something?

Why does Hodgson's name keep appearing in the (as of yet) situations vacant column, for Smith's job?

As far as I can remember, he's played second fiddle to Denis Betts, who's team has been dog pooh (bar 6 of the first 7 games in 2016) for the last 3 years. It's hardly a glowing cV, is it?

Sally's just doing sarcasm again, Lefty

it beats reality so i'm told............

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Sun Jun 04, 2017 10:53 pm  

Wires71 wrote:

It's just about seeing things earlier. The writing was on the wall a long time ago.

Well done to you, go give yourself a big pat on the back.

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 1:49 am  

TS is a rich mans Ian Millward.
Does great when someone else has built the team. When forced to build his own team, takes them to the brink of relegation before getting ousted. .

[Uncle Rico]

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 6:48 am  

rubber duckie wrote:

TS is a rich mans Ian Millward.
Does great when someone else has built the team. When forced to build his own team, takes them to the brink of relegation before getting ousted. .

Hence a little piece of Sally's post that isn't sarcastic, or that's how I read it

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 7:59 am  

sally cinnamon wrote:

If this does happen though, Hodgson can't take the credit because he will basically have just ridden on the team that Smith built over many years, like TS did by taking Cullen's team to glory.

I don't think that's true; if a coach takes an underperforming group of players and turns things around, I think he deserves all the credit, as McGuire did for us with Noble's Wigan team, or as Holbrook seems to be doing at Saints.

[Uncle Rico]

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 8:13 am  

Geoff wrote:

I don't think that's true; if a coach takes an underperforming group of players and turns things around, I think he deserves all the credit, as McGuire did for us with Noble's Wigan team, or as Holbrook seems to be doing at Saints.

The point being that it many think that it was Cullen's team not Smith's that delivered, another example of Smith's inadequacy as a coach

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 9:22 am  

Hardly think it was Cullen's teams that has competed in 4 challenge cup finals and 3 grand finals and won 2 league leaders shields. Almost won everything last year. I gotta question player toughness and desire. Having no half backs makes competing very difficult. Where we gonna find some half backs?

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 9:49 am  

Nothing will change IMO.... They will point to Leeds - they had a season like we had last year, then the following season they were rubbish, in the middle 8's and competed for nothing, fans crying out for the coach to go (they even wanted Smith back), then they do OK the year after (this year). Warrington will look at that model, and say, we're having the same troubles, lets stick with our coach like Leeds did.

The problem is, Leeds had quite a lot of injuries last year, but still had one of the best back lines in Super League IMO (MaCguire, Hall, Moon, Watkins, Briscoe etc) - we have one quality player injured, and nothing else to look forward to. We will go into that middle 8's and will have to prey that Leigh and Hull KR can't beat us, because atm, Widnes, Huddersfield and Catalan (8th will be between those two), are all better than us, and actually have stronger squads than the start of the year (we are weaker).

As others have said, we have been rank average since the great team was split up 4 years ago - we managed what we managed last year because 1. Of the easy run we had to Wembley, and 2. Super League was, and still is, average at best - probably the lowest quality I have seen in Super League since it started.

You can also blame our "homegrown" recruitment - on one hand I like the fact that we have some many English players in the squad - but I would rather have as many overseas players as Castleford, Hull, Salford etc, and be where they are, rather than two, over age, past their best ones that we have....

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:11 am  

Bigted wrote:

Hardly think it was Cullen's teams that has competed in 4 challenge cup finals and 3 grand finals and won 2 league leaders shields. Almost won everything last year. I gotta question player toughness and desire. Having no half backs makes competing very difficult. Where we gonna find some half backs?

Was it not Cullen's team that won 3 CC's with only small changes to personnel

We almost won everything, sounds like Bullseye "here's what you could have won"

Players desire, yes that's the players, but just as much it is the coaches desire to get the team playing with the right attitude

Half backs, that's fairly and squarely the fault of TS

Re: 2017 and Tony Smith : Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:58 am  

matt6169 wrote:

Nothing will change IMO.... They will point to Leeds - they had a season like we had last year, then the following season they were rubbish, in the middle 8's and competed for nothing, fans crying out for the coach to go (they even wanted Smith back), then they do OK the year after (this year). Warrington will look at that model, and say, we're having the same troubles, lets stick with our coach like Leeds did.

The problem is, Leeds had quite a lot of injuries last year, but still had one of the best back lines in Super League IMO (MaCguire, Hall, Moon, Watkins, Briscoe etc) - we have one quality player injured, and nothing else to look forward to. We will go into that middle 8's and will have to prey that Leigh and Hull KR can't beat us, because atm, Widnes, Huddersfield and Catalan (8th will be between those two), are all better than us, and actually have stronger squads than the start of the year (we are weaker).

As others have said, we have been rank average since the great team was split up 4 years ago - we managed what we managed last year because 1. Of the easy run we had to Wembley, and 2. Super League was, and still is, average at best - probably the lowest quality I have seen in Super League since it started.

You can also blame our "homegrown" recruitment - on one hand I like the fact that we have some many English players in the squad - but I would rather have as many overseas players as Castleford, Hull, Salford etc, and be where they are, rather than two, over age, past their best ones that we have....

The problem is, Leeds won the treble in 2015. If we are emulating anyone, it is Huddersfield.