What came first, Chicken or Egg?

Theses same players were already successfull before the coach was appointed. Unless you have only been watching last couple of years?

Right well let's no bother with a coach then.

If he gets personal attacks when the team is losing, but people put any success down to the players what's the point.

This must be how the Chelsea FC forum feels....

You could have coached that team to success over last couple of years.

The bigger test is how to maintain it. That is the area it looks like McDermott will fail in.

That seems to have been the Hetherington approach since Tony Smith left at the end of 2007.

When the captain retires perhaps his appointment will be made official?

..until then we have to muddle through with a puppet government coach? Great

No it hasn't.

Yeah I wish we could go back to the Tony Smith days. The days when we went 31 months without winning anything, and failed to succeed in any of the 10 competitions from WCC '05 to GF '07 (and won only 4 out of a possible 15 titles during his reign)....even though he wasn't faced with an ageing squad and got given signings McDermott could only dream about.

He also replaced more than half the side that won the GF in 2004 by 2007. Mathers, Calderwood, Walker, Bai, McDermott, Poching, Ward, McKenna and Furner had all been replaced.

TBH I think until the hooker situation gets sorted, its really hard to tell which players still 'have it' and which don't. I find it hard to believe that a player who has never relied on speed in Sinfield could suddenly become ineffective, even with a heavier workload in defence.

I'd say that the whole team is stuttering on attack - and making some good players look very average in the process - because our acting half isn't playing well.

That's right - the Tony Smith days when it looked like the players were being coached during the week when it came to their performances on a weekend. A team that cared about their final League placings, a team that went out to entertain the fans not bore them into submission, a team who could score from all over and mount a defence that didn't rely on hero plays. Something Huddersfield fans will no doubt have noticed from his time there just as the Warrington fans will have noticed since he replaced James Lowes.

Playing entertaining rugby was not something that was apparent at London under Brian McDermott though.

I wonder whatever happened to Jimmy and Brian?

They won the last two Grand Finals.

One of them against Tony Smith's Warrington.

HTH

Steady on, you'll be wanting the guy with 13 on his back to play LF, 7 to be SH and 9 to be hooker.
That would never do as it doesn't fit with what appears to be McD's ethos of deconstructing the pivot roles and awarding bits of each role to who he imagines can handle it.
Hence we see Burrow wasted at dummy half, Sinfield being the conduit for just about everything and McShane playing half a game.
These are talented players and they have done well to cope with the coach's notions but they could be used so much better.

Some high end silliness here, the bottom line is this, if you ask a Reliant Robin to win Le Mans it won't.

If you ask an idiot to Coach a team like Leeds with players reaching the twilight of their career with skills diminishing you get a Reliant Robin, if you play Burrow at 9 you also get a flat front tyre.

What?

Worst bottom line ever, worse than Adele's.

What?