I've been saying all season, you need to drop Wheeler as he has been a massive let down for you, especially given all the bigging up he has had on these boards for the last year or two.

You need to move Wellens into the centres where he doesn't need as much speed. There's nothing wrong with Wellens' ABILITY to tackle - he's just very slow these days, and he will no doubt tighten your defence up on that side.

Hohaia needs to stop pretending he's a stand off, and should be at full back where he belongs.

You need Lee Gaskell back to partner Lomax. Lomax is only every any good when he has Gaskell at the side of him.

Whilst I don't necessarily disagree, the question should be: Would he have been an improvement on Shenton/Wheeler in defence yesterday?

For me the answer is a clear yes and it is an obvious solution to getting some pace in at FB without dropping our captain (and one of our best players this season IMO) All opinions.

Problem with installing Rush until the end of the season is that we now appear to be in cruise control. He knows he is going back to his old job at the end of the season, he knows Brown is coming in next season. This season is now turning into one big, dead duck, just floating along with the current.

Whilst I agree, unless we want the biggest dummy spit in the history of RL then I'd say its either Wellens starting or Wellens not playing at all.

Yep.

But it was always going to be that way. Installing an interim coach into a squad that needs major surgery is never going to work. Solidity and ship steadying were no doubt the remit given, and I'd say they've achieved that. Had we played better against Wigan things would look a lot more rosy.

We should have asked Huddersfield to release Brown. Their succession plan is already in place and biding it's time to take over, so us taking him now wouldn't have been too major an issue. It would give him the time needed to make the structural changes we need for next season and to begin the process of change. Instead we're very likely to have a really rough period at the start of next season as those changes happen, likely ruining another campaign before it's really even started.

Absolutely. Waiting a full season for a coach is fraught with danger. Whose to say Brown's stock won't collapse (like Justin Morgan or even Iain Millward) between now and then? We'd look pretty silly awaiting a coach no-one wants come the start of the year.

What if players start piling up bad habits (as they appear to be) under Rush? Brown could be forced to spend half his first season ironing them out.

What if some outstanding candidate suddenly becomes available next week? Again, we'd be the laughing stock shackled to Brown whilst some big fish slips away and into the hands of our rivals.

Although Nathan Brown is a good coach, i think some of the Saints fans are expecting the world back at thier feet with him. Huddersfield look un easy after loosing three on the trot. And i do not believe Brown will do much better than Rush with the current team you have.

It's going to be a tough few years before your come out of this current stage your going through. But it's a vital stage that you must carry out. Just like what happened to warriors before brian noble come along. Replacing the old experienced ones is a tough job!

This season was over the instant the players decided that they'd throw their weight around, get rid of the guy they didn't like and get a couple of their mates put in to run the show for the rest of the season instead. As out of his depth as he may have been, Simmons was clearly a lot more up to the task than Rush is now being shown up as being. If the players had just shut it and got on with the job they were paid for and acted in the best interests of the club and not their own and rode out the Simmons train for the rest of the season (galling though that may have been) then we might still have been in the fight this season. Once Simmons was forced out 1/4 of the way into the season with no permanent successor ever likely to be available until the end of the year we were always doomed to a season long trudge towards the end of the playoffs with no prospects beyond best-possible-situation damage limitation.

Yeah, Simmmons was on fire when we went 5 without a win, culminating in that "performance" against Bradford.

Clearly a better record than only losing to SL's table toppers, beating everyone else including the reigning SL champs comfortably twice and the reigning league leaders shield holders comfortably once.

Memories in sport are very short.

Yes, because those performances would have had nothing at all to do with the players wanting to force Simmons out, would they?

Simmons was ****, but he got that same set of players (when they were putting in some effort for him) to (a couple of unlucky injuries excepted) a G/F win just half a dozen games previously. There's no reason we couldn't have been in the same position with him around again this season. With the current incumbents there's more chance of Englebert Humperdink winning at O/T now...