I don't remember any centres sitting on the bench last season.

It was a mixed bag, but better than the shambles he had been left with by Royce.

Royce did very well in his first season, but then so did Hanley, in fact hanley did much better and lasted a far shorter time in his 2nd season. Royce was given 1/4 of the season and took us to 10th.

The only issue for me was the half back issue, everything else that was done benefited the team.

Foster had to be dropped, the fans had called for this for weeks as we could all see him losing his grip on the game. Wheeler was not going great guns either. The initial move to put defensive players in their prime positions did what was needed, but as a part timer waiting for the next guy to take over, there was never going to be a longer term philosophy.

He did what he had to do - steadied a ship that had fast been sinking - and in that sense he has to be considered something of a success.

My main criticism would be that he has not allowed us to play with the shackles off often enough; the few times we have done so, with the forwards offloading and Lomax, Roby, Wilkin, Wello supporting, we have played some real good stuff. Had we seen more of this, I'm sure we'd have picked up more points in the regular season and may have had more success in the knockout comps too.

Playing the 'safety first' rugby we've had for the vast majority of the season really exposes the lack of creativity in the halves.

A few weeks ago on radio merseyside, Rush said that he has ambitions to become a CEO. But he did say that it would be a "rugby CEO" because he wasn't really interested in dealing with balance sheets and stuff like that. I imagine that he will do things like contract negotiations, etc.

Plus saints tweeted: "For all those asking, Rushie is remaining at the club and will take on a senior role within the organisation".

I think that he has done a great job considering the state we were in. Of course he has made mistakes along the way. He is an inexperienced coach. E.g. Flannery should never have played centre in the match the other night. But you can't fault his effort and determination. With regards to the style of play, it's not surprising that he went back to basics and concentrated on defence. I just don't think that he had the knowledge, experience and confidence to coach the players to play an open and expansive attacking style. I very much expect that Brown will be able to introduce the structures and systems that we need in order to do this next season. I hope so anyway. But thats just my opinion.

Royce used to take a reserve back as his fourth sub, so that if an injury occurred there was minimal disruption.
Unfortunately, the young backs who were selected (for example foster, wheeler and makinson) would end up only getting 5 or ten minutes at the end, leading to much frustration amongst the supporters that we were essentially trying to compete when using one less player.

...not to mention the CC semi-final where he picked a barely fit Wheeler (who'd only just returned from yet another injury) as the back on the bench even though if he had been needed to come on and replace an injured player he'd have probably struggled to manage more than 10 minutes himself...

Given Rush's experience in coaching first team, and the hole that he was thrown into he did a very good job to get us to third and 40mins from OT.

After the Leeds and Warrington games I thought we had definitely turned a page and the confidence returned to the players: we were offloading the ball with style and the forwards were battering their counterparts...however - and this is a major negative of his time as coach from my PoV - after this promising start we went back to percentage rugby, and one that hasn't sat well with the paying supporters. 5 drives and a kick bored the hell out of me, and our three-quarter line may as well have just taken a seat until we got into the oppo's 20.

Another negative was the way Rush handled the youngsters...from an outside perspective he seems to have completely killed the confidence within Gaskell and Foster, and has suffocated Lomax's general play from half-back by putting him alongside Hohaia. Lomax hasn't been great this season, and you'd have to say that the change of his half-back partner is a major reason for this, as it seems to be the only variable.

Overall though I'd say that Rush did the job that was expected of him, and very nearly got us to another Grand Final. Hopefully Brown can come in now and push the club on by implementing a new tactical philosophy and developing and improving the likes of Lomax and Gaskell.

So really, we're agreed. He'll have matched the reasonable expectations we had of him given the circumstances, but, realistically, you'd want considerably more delivered by a permanant head coach.

After what he's done I wouldn't want him to be permanent head coach as he doesn't seem like a good long-term solution, but do you think that some of his decisions may have been made differently had he been given the job permanently in the first place?

Nah. IMO he's shown that he has no advanced tactics or play book beyond safety first.
Plus, dropping your only player with a long kicking game when you've decided to stick to % rugby shows a real odd approach.

Not quite. As I said at the time of Royce's sacking, I was of the view that to sack an experienced coach who had taken us to a GF the season before was a mistake, especially so early in the season when our losses had been so marginal. In that sense my expectations have been realised, but whether you would consider those expectations 'reasonable' is another matter. My expectations have been met not just because we were dumped out of the CC at quarter final stage for the first time in 12 years or that we didn't make it to the GF for the first time in 7 years. But also because of the attitude towards the young players, the willingness to play senior players regardless of their form or attitude, and the style of play, among other things.

Mmm, but are you talking about your expectations of Rush as a coaching individual, or the club set up as a whole? I agree he's shown tactical deficiancies and the whole Gaskell thing stuck in my craw, but I'm sure you/I/we wouldn't criticise a player with comparible 1st team experience for making some wrong decisions, but he did take us from 10th to 3rd & he beat Leeds, Wigan, Wire & Catalan (just). Rush the man has done alright, but he'll not be swatting away offers from Superleague clubs just yet.

While there were some sensible arguments against Royce leaving, we were in a real hole and I don't think he'd have pulled us round (certainly not as soon) and I don't think he'd have won any pots.
I do think that the nail in his coffin was mcmanus thinking about ongoing ticket sales. It was extremely depressing watching given the nature of our defeats, even if they were only by a couple of points (the Hull and Bradford games stick in my mind). Moving to a interim coach immediately lowered and expectations for the season and made people look forward to next, granting the temporary staf a degree of immunity to criticism for their tenure.
I'll stick by the club as it being the right decison at the time.

Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085

Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085

I think Huddersfield would have killed for a coach like Rush to get the players playing % football and to stop the rot.

He did the job that was needed. I'm sure had he done that for 6-8 games to give Saints time to find an available coach, then none of this over expectation of winning GF's would be laid at his door. A temporary measure for 3/4's of a season was just a bit too long for some fans.