But we had a season of Cunningham's coaching last year to judge as well. Last season was one where the results themselves were acceptable. We lost in both semi finals to Leeds, who had a legendary side. Fine in terms of outcomes really. But the glaring problem, as discussed above, is the style of play. It was mind numbing at times last season, with everyone feeling the entertainment value had simply disappeared. We'd eroded a lot of the Saints way over Cunningham's tenure, he was involved with the previous coaches since his retirement as well. That style of play is so poor now that it's affected season ticket sales and will continue to affect attendances. RL is not an industry with spare demand like football, where being a results based business is sustainable. You cannot employ a Sam Allardyce or Tony Pulis in RL and dig out results, as the crowds will drop. I fear we've handed the keys over to Barcelona over to Allardyce.




I'd agree with that, but an awful lot of those at the club are there because they were signed whilst Cunningham was on the coaching staff and being groomed for the top role. The same people are presumably also still at the club in Mike Rush and the rest of McManus' cronies.



It's widely acknowledged that it was Cunningham who wanted his signature. Brown was leaving by that point and Cunningham was calling the shots on recruitment for the following season when he'd be in charge. It's what made KC's statements about Burns's failings recently seem so laughable.

I think a lot of Saints fans, me included, thought that last season was a bedding in period and that this season would see the shackles come off. I thought we'd see Longy working with the backs and developing some real attacking intent. I thought we'd see progress. The signs from the first few games are awful, it seems there are no plans to change the style we're playing, there is no sign of progress. If this continues, there has got to be change. I personally think the pressure is telling on KC, you can see that from the stupid things he's saying in interviews recently, he's flat out lying about how things, or is delusional. There is also the rumblings from the squad about the style, Wilkin had a dig recently saying that clubs needs to be respecting the entertainment value of the sport more and playing more attacking rugby. That was clearly a dig at KC as we're the exact opposite. Four one out drives and a poor kick is our current play book and that's as far as it goes.

We've seen Hull KR lose to Wakefield, easily the worst team in SL history, this weekend. If Saints don't go there and absolutely muller them, something is drastically wrong. We should be winning that game by 20, we'll see if that's the case. We need to win the next three games, if we don't we could be in a spectacular mess come the end of April given the fixtures we have that month. The worrying thing is that the most likely way to win those games is to go even more safe and take even fewer risks. That brings a risk in that he'll be destroyed by the fans if that results in us losing one of those games.

You are talking about a purely aesthetic and highly subjective question to which there is no right or wrong answer. Ultimately it's results that matter. Let's not forget that playing better football we LOST five Grand Finals whereas we are 1 from 1 playing the most conservative gameplan ever seen at Old Trafford.

Whether we like it or not Cunningham will see this as significant. Whether we like it or not Cunningham will NEVER be sacked because of conservative football but he certainly will if he loses too many games.

This is the price you pay for a fully-professional game. If you don't like the ride - don't buy a ticket.



Cunningham might have wanted his signature - but we really don't know what he knew about Burns' condition leading up to him signing. It's entirely possible that Cunningham didn't know. But those involved in scouting him as well as the medical team have no excuses.



Given the balance of our squad I really don't know what justification you had in even THINKING we'd suddenly start throwing it about. From the above it appears that you were relying on Sean Long to sprinkle some fairy dust because I can't see any other way it's happening.

Sean Long can't turn Jordan Turner into Paul Newlove. Nor can he make Travis Burns play like Tommy Martyn. And if he does have any fairy dust my guess is he will need all of it just to get Lomax & Walsh back to full fitness.

I'm not saying we can't play more entertaining football. But whilst we are strong in certain facets of the game we just don't have that many good footballers. You can't do one without the other.



Early results mean almost nothing. Sure, it's great if you can get plenty of points on the board early. But Huddersfield were abysmal at the start of the last campaign and yet finished like a train toward the championship rounds.

We're absolutely terrible you will have no trouble beating us on Friday

When you do muller us on Friday, I know a few people who will be quite ecstatic, because they'll be able to cash in their winnings on their bet that Chester will be the first coaching casualty of the season.

That said, I like and admire KC but any more wide of the mark, illogical post match comments like the ones he made after the drubbing to the Roosters last Friday could conceivably see him shown the door before Chester. There's no place for uttering such cackamallabab in any situation and certainly not after such a one sided affair. Tell it as it is.

He totally embarrassed himself.

Agree, but KC is a half decent coach. Suffers similarly from Chester's ability to be hit and very miss at talent spotting.

In terms of our personnel, the current Widnes team and even more frustratingly, the Salford team who's attack long coached, are far more entertaining than us with the ball in hand yet they don't have super stars. It's not like what everyone's demanding is a crazy Leeds type offload style; a more entertaining way of playing that doesn't involve 3 drives and kick isn't too much for this group of players.

Again, this is a subjective judgement which has no meaning outside individually derived frames of reference.

Whilst I'm sure most people can arrive at some broad definition of "entertaining football" - the moment we switch to specifics consensus goes out the window and the subtleties of individual preference hold sway.

Perhaps if people spent more time explaining what they think constitutes entertaining football rather than expecting everyone to know intuitively what IT is we might get somewhere with this question. But I wouldn't bet money on it.

Anything that deviates from the unimaginative, 3 one out drives and a kick straight to the fullback would be a fine start. I wouldn't mind if we played an effective forward game with little tip ons, dummy runners and running in pairs, but we don't even do that.

As I said in my post, it's not the Leeds style I think people want, it's a less painful one than 3 one out drives and a poor kick.

While you can't put a concrete definition on 'entertaining rugby', you would have to be some optimist to think what we're producing at the minute goes anywhere near anyone's individual definition.

I hope it changes on Friday.

This isn't very helpful - not least because one of the first criticisms which pops up in the wake of any run of bad form by any club you club you care to mention (after "incompetent"/"cheating" refs) is "unimaginative play".

I'd argue it's more a function of psychological stress than any specific gameplan. When faced with challenging circumstances human beings are genetically pre-programmed to behave more conservatively. It's a survival mechanism which given our position as the dominant form of life on this planet it seems to work.

Why exactly our players have gone into their shell so early in the season is an interesting question to which I don't know the answer.

It's odd that our players suffer this 'psychological stress' A) more often than most teams and B) when we're winning, losing or drawing.

Nonsense. It is our pre-determined tactic and gameplan, as confirmed by both Jon Wilkin and Sean Long last week. Ultra-conservative is our style of play, regardless of opposition or position in the match.

It wouldn't be such a bad thing if we were actually any good at it, but 8 defeats in our past 12 games show that this tactic isn't working.

It's a perfectly recognisable phenomenon we see repeated in the workplace each day. It's possible that the players are afraid of making mistakes because of the way the coaching staff responds to them making mistakes. I'm not saying this is the reason for them keeping things so tight because there are other possibilities. The point is - we don't know.

Playing conservatively and playing no other tactics than five drives and a kick [iare not the same thing[/i. I can believe Cunningham prefers the former (for several reasons) but you are going to have to provide significantly more evidence to prove to me that he only wants the latter.

In that scenario, the coaches would be to blame. I'm just happy you've accepted that there is a conservative style on show. Even if you are putting it down to a psychological fear that for whatever reason doesn't seem to affect most SL sides as badly as us.

For me either play more expansively our really work on our forwards game and turn it into an effective one. The longer he sticks with this current non-effective style, farcically trying to state it's similar to the saints of old, the more criticism he will take.