The sign of a real quality coach for me is one that consistently gets the players and team punching above their weight. Regardless of the obvious personnel deficiencies and losing games you can see when a team is well coached as they look cohesive and communicate effectively.

As a coach you can then reflect that you're getting the best out of the players at your disposal. What you cant do is say 'that wasn't good enough' time and time again, if you are then you need to look at your own performance as a coach and the environment you're creating. A team is absolutely a direct reflection of the coach.

Wouldn't disagree but there's plenty of coaches - and often the ones that win stuff - who still seem unable to nail this consistently. Ones like McDermott, Macnamara, Radford who've definitely achieved that cohesion, often from adversity, and yet have masterminded some real s**t fests. Would you say they were good, bad or indifferent?

It's also pretty apparent when the team is winning in spite of coaching. I'd say a coaches form can deviate like a players can. You have periods where you know it's just not coming together and that's where that personal honest reflection is important.

Correct

Trouble is 3 different coaches have struggled with the bulk of the squad. At some stage you have to accept its the players just not being good enough.

If we're blaming Furner for defensive deficiencies, then we have to credit him for attacking improvements; the cohesion people mention missing in defence certainly doesn't look to be missing when we finally manage to hang on to the ball. Maybe we need to be having a look at dedicated defensive coaches...

Your attack is 8th best in the league with 2 teams with a worse attack less than 10 points behind and the worst 2 almost 50 points behind. There needs to be more improvement in your attack to support your opinion but I agree the defence needs tightening that way you will have better chances to win tighter games.

I haven't looked at the stats tbh but from a fan on the terraces it's been better to watch. I don't know how it compares with last year etc. It would probably be helpful to know percentage of possession in which ever years we compare as well to try and look at some kind of "strike rate" if you will...

RE the defensive stuff, we're getting ourselves in a vicious circle because we turn over so much cheap ball through errors in bad areas. Doing that is then exposing the frailties we have. Couple that with 1 on 1 misses and bad discipline when we do end sets in the right part of the field and it's no wonder we are where we are.

I'd be interested to see possession stats from this year to see how often we are getting 50% of the ball. I'd hazard an uneducated guess our "strike rate" would be higher this year than it was last but this is based purely on what is in my head which is often wide of the mark!

They can’t score if we have the ball. The lack of basic respect and competence with the ball is the thing that’s exposing our defensive weakness more than anything else.

Keep hold of the ball better, do less defending, concede less points. Not hard when you analyse it like that. I remember when Tony Smith had to teach the players how to hold the ball, maybe we are back at that level again?

Totally agree.
A good coach improves the quality of his squad through innovation and player development.

Maybe they are punching above their weight?

Never mind Folks. You have the Bulls in the CC to gain some confidence which is clearly what a lot of your younger players are lacking.
Should be interesting.

Bang on for me.

We lack awareness of how to control a game when the heat gets turned up. When Hudds were off in the first half we were fine. When they just ran a bit harder and faster in the second half we looked like crumbling and only a breakaway try stopped a very tense finish. They need to get smarter.

A coach can and should help with that but players have to understand the game enough to make sensible calls when on the pitch. Furner can't call every second of every play from the touchline.

It also helps if you have a team captain who is prepared to stand up and make the calls to the team on the pitch too, something that Watkins seems unable to do, maybe it's time to hand the captaincy to someone else?

Totally agree. Kallum is a good player (though struggling this year after his injury last year) but that does not mean he makes a good captain. That though shouldn't stop others from being vocal and leading the team.

I know it's pointless to say but look at us 5 years ago, sunny, JP, mags to name just three leaders. There is nobody in the team who can lead.