Lister makes his one sensible post of the season - wonders never cease

Rubbish!! This is all his fault

When we won the grand final two seasons ago we were under Tony Smith who was infact a world class coach, The season after we won it again but that was down to momentum that tony smith had created nothing really to do with mclennan, now this season we are seeing a team coached by a very mediocre coach and its showing. We cant blame players cos we know what our lads are capable of!!

Mclennan Out!! IMO

Funny that one. Because Graham Murray gets a lot of praise around here for the way he got pretty poor players to play above themselves and make a good team. Quite right too, because some of them were poor players.

But we don't think Smith might have done the same thing?

IMO certain players get accepted now becasue of the fact that they have won two championships or maybe even three, not because they are quality players.

Of course, that may or may not allow Bluey any excuses.

We appear not to spend the full cap so GH won't sack Bluey.

It's just been bad planning all along since the end of last season

Your narrow minded enough to believe that. Like some others on here.

The problems we are experiencing did not start end of last season. The problems started when we decided to chuck in all the good work with our production line of academy kids, and instead give jobs to the boys for sentimality value.

Sending quality youngsters out on loan for super league sides over the last couple of years would also have been a massive advantage to us right now.

Shame other rivals followed our blueprint and completely enhanced on it, whilst we wallowed in our previous success.

The proof of Smith's turd polishing ability will be a win over Stains this year.

You are entitled to your opinion even if it is a load of balls. A world class coach wins titles at club and international level. Mclennan has Smith hasn't.

Mclennan managed to NIL the aussies Smith has still to beat them.

That's a valid point that.

That will be why we're now languishing at the foot of the table with an attack and defence inferior to all our rivals. No, wait.....

Seriously, I know we're not having the best season at present, by the standards we've set for ourselves lately, and there are clearly things for the powers-that-be at HQ to think calmly about, but the league table and some of the posts on here seem to be about totally different teams/seasons.

Kind of an over reaction that one El Diablo.

There is a difference to what I put and languishing at the bottom of the league.

We certainly have an issue with our academy set up. Thats fact. You want to debate that then put something constructive that is positive with it, and i will discuss.

I don't think the "standard" of the overall acadamy comp helps though disa.
I think we have plenty of potential within our acadamy although not up to the highest standards in terms of "numbers of quality players" within the system.
Hopefully the new overhaul of the acadamy leagues and more players out on loan will help enhance it in the years to come.

I dont' think that is the reason.

We had a set up from 2000 to envy the rest of super league, and we got great success from it.

When Powell departed, we continued with an excellent academy set up with Wilkinson, who was a fantastic coach for youngsters. From that we went with Hallas, who although not as good IMO still continued the good work. When Hallas went we went with Bastian, who did not have at the time the abilities of Wilkinson or Hallas, but he grew into the role, and for the club he was the usual cheap option, because he already worked for our partners.

During this time we then replaced good coaches at the different levels with former players, or in the case now current players.

I see many many junior games at amateur level and there certainly is not a shortage of players or potential star players. So nothing as changed there.

Yet by coincidence with the coaching changes our production line, and ability to produce the next level of players to fill in, as completely dried up.

By comparison, Saints inparticular have completely gone the other way. They have planned for what they have now, and are excelling not just in one age group, but all age groups. They have sent out on loan to super league sides, players who were been held back for a short period in order to gain necessary experience. Now they are ready to come back in for first team duties to replace previous 1st choices. That is an enhancement on our blue print even, because we never did that loaning out to super league sides, at the same success as Saints.

There's still plenty of "potential" and "talent" in our acadamy sides across the age groups.
Just because we haven't been dominating the relevant leagues doesn't mean there isn't potential stars within those teams.
I agree the numbers aren't there as before and you may have a point re-the coaches involved but the investment and recruitment is still there just not on the same scale as before.
As for sending players out on loan to SL sides a lot of these teams are now trusting their own youth set-ups because they don't have to worry about relegation anymore.
You know yourself the club "prefer" to send out players on loan to get experience but you can't force clubs to take them.
I do agree with some of what your saying but i don't think it's as straight forward as "jobs for the boys" scenario you describe.

I was simply a little confused by which of our rivals are now doing things so much better than us. Saints continue to set the standards in the regular season, nothing new there, although they are not finding life so easy this year either. A few others are catching up, that will happen in sport, the challenge for them will be to sustain it long term.

Which issue with the academy do you refer to? For me, while the Academy Grand Final wins were very nice, it is the ability of the academy to produce a couple of players a year to feed into the first team squad, and every so often produce a real gem. We don't have the need to find so many as we did around the period when McGuire, Burrow, Mathers, Diskin et al came through (which really wasn't a great period for the club in the first team) but we now have a good squad of home-grown players of varying ages, and we are still bringing players into the first team from the academy, and continuing to compete at the top with them.

The trouble with all the doom and gloom at the moment, not you in particular, yours was just the post I happened to choose to quote, is that I've heard/read it all so many times over the past few seasons. I can't help feeling that, once again, reports of our demise may have been exaggerated.

Incidentally, we did loan players to Super League sides during the golden era around 2003/04, I recall Richie Mathers (Wire) and Nick Scruton (Hull) going out on loan around that time.

So what!!

Smith is better coach the BM imo and what i said i stand by because thats is how i see it, We have the quality in our team to beat every team in that league and its just not happening, But to me it boils down to training methods and the coaching,