It's a shame we are like this post Nathan Brown. After the disaster of Royce Simmons and Mick Potter I truely beleive Brown had brought us through the other end of transition stage. He had brought in better players and got rid of the players that was letting us down and we won a grand final.

On the back of the grand final, we didn't build it on, in fact we took 3 steps back in bringing in a rookie coach. You need to build on success and not go backwards like we did. The most crazy thing in bringing KC in as coach was the fact he'd never ever coached a team. He hadn't done the u16s, u19s, reserves or even any amateur coaching, he was just let loose as first team coach without cutting his teeth in the game.

The common purpose with Potter, Simmons and Brown was too manage a transition and bring some of our younger players through, for better or worse we did see that change but struggled with consistency.
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For me KC because of his inexperience is doing the opposite, he wanted leaders so he got them, he wanted experience in key positions so he got them, the only thing that didn't change was his game plan. He has also lost trust with his younger players Savelio, Greenwood, Thompson, Richardson, Fages have not been handled well on the man management side, we are becoming an old team with an uncertain future.

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To be fair, we did need some leaders and experience. I thought the signings of Smith and Douglas was good idea as both leaders with loads of experience but Smith ain't played yet and Douglas has been very poor.

Even the Morgan signing made good sense. He is experienced nrl player, fast and good with the ball. It brought us balance to the side as we have two centres but again, that ain't worked out.

i'm someone who has always felt the need to be patient with Longy and Cunningham due to their lack of experience in coaching.

The back end of last season gave me hope that something had clicked with the pairing and they had figured out a few things on how to run things.

So far this year though it has been a reversion to past issues.

The defence has been on the whole ordinary, this is despite the so called poor defensive players being let go.

Last night was one of desperate players having to make many last ditch scrambling tackles. That for me is one of the reasons we are conceding lots of penalties. The defensive structure just is not in place. For example i noticed last night numerous times that two players were marking the same space. This leaves gaps elsewhere.

Offensively we are very one dimensional. I accept that missing half back and fullback is going to affect overall creativity. However in the past we have been in far worse situations, but had the structures that allowed players to run set plays and get over the line. We have also been prepared to use the ball, something we are seemingly unwilling or incapable of doing now.

The stats bear this out, in that the second rowers are getting comparatively less ball. All the go forward is via the front row or the wingers. This basically shows that its a case of winger returning kick, then further winger carry, then Prop carry, prop carry, prop carry, finally kick.
No wonder fans are complaining about boring rugby and opposition teams are easily handling us.

I have bracketed the opposition for comparison

Against Leeds.
Wingers: 44 carries (27)
back row inc loose forward and replacements 26 carries (39)
props inc replacements 56 carries (44)

Against Leigh
Wingers 23 (23)
back row 36 (43)
Props 46 (41)

Against Wakefield
Wingers 34 (36)
back row 31 (46)
Props 54 (25)

Defensively ive noticed the back row appears to be doing all the work. I think teams are just bypassing our big pack when going forward and moving it wide. We on the other hand just smash it straight through the middles. We make good yardage doing this, but for me opposition coaches are just suckering the Saints into a false belief that they just need to keep ploughing through the middle. The problem with this is the props are getting overworked and tired out. This forces the back row to play tighter in the middle defensively to plug gaps there. This then leaves spaces out wide forcing the back row into scrambling defence and conceding penalties.
Opposition coaches are just manipulating us into a tight pocket that they can easily control, before out flanking us when they have the ball.

IF KC and Longy are to survive i think they need to muster at least one win in our next two games. Lose both those and they are gone.

As for replacements. Geoff Toovey who is currently at Bradford Bulls would be my choice, as is proven Grand Final NRL coach, failing that Steve Mcnamara could be an outside bet.
I know many call for Darryl Powell but for me his teams have so far flattered to to deceive, and when previously put in charge of a big club he was a disaster.

I'd attempt to bring over Jason Demetriou or Dave Fairleigh.

Daryl Powell was far from a disaster at Leeds. He took over a mess after Dean Lance and gave kids a chance which started a period of success. He led those kids to 2nd in league,a cup final and to 80 mins from a grand final.

He wouldnt leave Cas for Saints tho so all irrelevent.

You guys are stuck like my Leeds team was last yr. You are a great club tho and will come thru it but its a tough period to go thru and im not sure where your next win is coming from. You will be fine though.

No I am not, and what you are suggesting is folly - do you really think we can wait for an empty ground because I'm telling you, when that happens (and it will) the business can NEVER recover from it - end of. This is a commercial and results business, end of, no fog no fudge just black and white and that's it. There's no room for 'let's see how it goes' and someone as shrewd as McManus will be/should be looking at the overall picture and assessing this:

'How much confidence do I have in this guy to deliver'?

In doing that he can't ignore the fact that KC's overall record is woeful - that should be the determinant of whether he stays or goes and he's hardly got a compelling argument to stay has he? Eamonn has backed the guy, he isn't delivering and no amount of 'see how it goes' will change it because he simply isn't coach material. Without being a smart alec I said that the day he was appointed (and I think you did too) - delaying the inevitable will only cause further damage, not make things better Pete. Sometimes you just gotta do it.

We are on a very "tricky wicket" at the moment, can we afford to wait for a turnaround, come Easter we could be staring at 9 losses which was our whole season loss last year before the eights. There is not much confidence that dramatic changes can be made from a stubborn man hell bent on his style of coaching at all cost to player and supporter.
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If we do end up with the worse scenario at Easter we are probably looking at avoiding the middle 8's, this conservative style of play can't go on we've not had our injury crisis yet, once that kicks in we will really start to struggle especially if it effects our back line.
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Personally I would give him the Catalan and Warrington game if he fails then we quickly need a new coach and time to change things around.

FWIW, even as a Wiganer I feel for Cunningham. He was a great player for you and may have become a great coach. He was simply imo given the job at least 5 years early. The majority if not all good coaches have learnt their trade by coaching at youth, reserves and assistant level for a number of years before getting the top job.

It's very rare a young inexperienced player comes into a team and performs consistently straight away, a coach is no different.

I thought Cunningham's comments after the game on sky strange saying he was very pleased with his players, they didn't complete sets the end of sets where poor far too many unforced errors and poor discipline but he was very pleased with the performance if that's the standard he's happy with then you will be in the lower end of the table this year sometimes your poor like we where but you grind a win out but there's poor and poor you are never happy with it

Daryl Powell was not a success at Leeds - hence leaving. Not his fault, as he was thrown in at the deep end in an emergency, and its great to see that after actually learning his trade he's now seemingly a very good coach.

TBH you could blame the club for appointing Cunningham without experience, but how big is his ego in taking it on with no experience? Why is it so hard to accept that he should have gone and coached juniors or even better in the Championship for a few years?

Even if we start playing better when Smith comes back are we happy to be a club that is utterly reliant on one player? Wnot this just lead to clubs targeting Smith constantly?

It can't be easy to turn down your dream job and say I'm not good enough though can it? Has anyone on here ever turned down their dream job and given that as the reason?

Champion of young british half-backs, Garry Schofield slam Super League coaches for dropping Patton & Danny Richardson. www.totalrl.com/schofield-blasts ... halfbacks/

Champion of young british half-backs, Garry Schofield slam Super League coaches for dropping Patton & Danny Richardson. www.totalrl.com/schofield-blasts ... halfbacks/