The players can be individual world beaters but without a top coach they are just a bunch of lads running around without a clue not too disimilar to what we saw against Warrington this week.

Listening to Joynt on SLSM this week it was great to hear him talk about Hughes, McRae, Hanley, Millward. Inspiring coaches! DA was an inspirational coach also. The coach will always set apart the best from the almost theres. Look at Warrington with Cullen and Lowes, they were going nowhere but had the resources (Simon Moran) to bring on good players. That has completely changed under Smith. Leeds too, before Smith (again) and McLennan they had minor success with Murray and disaster under Bell and Powell. Since DA left we have been the almosts, granted we lost our golden generation in the process. Potter was an almost, Simmons was a never. Rush/KC will be a never too. I dont like saying it but i can see Brown being the almost. Watching a programme about Mal Meninga on Sky showed that he is the inspiration this side/town/fan base needs. A team that combines the flamboyance of the Millward era with the steel of Anderson and a passion mainly for winning.

A revamp is needed from the top down. A head over heart scenario. Wellens has to go, Gardner has to go, Flannery is gone, Hohaia should join him. Magennis will never be good enough, Meli gets a stay of execution, Shenton has shipped off already. Yes we missed out on big signings like Hill, Ellis, Lynch. But we needed to stay out of the fee-paying medium risk market because of the investment we were making off the field.
We have a ground owned by US. A state of the art facility designed specifically for St Helens RLFC. Speccies will moan and groan about how their money is spent on god awful players giving us mediocre rugby but as cold hearted as it sounds id much rather be stood at Langtree Park than Knowsley Road. KR had its teams, its traditions, its history. It also had its leaks, its rust, its lack of bogs and structual damage that was destroying the club from its very soul. Heck we didnt even take money from the burger vans! Times got tough, speccies got annoyed the new stadium plans were taking forever to come through and the world crashed. I feel for EMc because he had to make a choice, the ground or the team. Being the businessman he is and the lover of Saints i didnt envy his decision. He rightly chose the stadium, so what if we get beat in Grand Finals, there'll be more. Yeah they hurt and its painful to watch teams creep up on us and our past dominance. I'll look at Bradford and think that could have been us, i'll look back to Wigan and think they had their "success" and they went through a dry spell.

We were blessed with Long, Sculthorpe, Newlove, Iro, Albert, Lyon, Gidley, Shiels, Cunningham, Martyn, Joynt, Sullivan et al but so were Wigan with Offiah, Edwards et al and so are Leeds now with Burrow, McGuire, Sinfield, Peacock etc. Our time will come around again, we now have the stadium we wanted so we can start to build a team to make history once again. Its a long process but when it comes good, which it will, then we'll be winning in pretty much every way. But first, looking past the upcoming Brown era, EMc needs to start convincing Meninga that St Helens is lovely in the summer time because the Saints legacy begins with him at the helm.

Feel free to ridicule!

What's there to ridicule?

Is this notion that we've had to cut costs due to the stadium genuine? Are we spending less than the cap currently? I've seen no suggestion from the club that we are. I've always thought we've taken our eye off the ball in terms of the squad because of the work on the stadium, which obviously and rightly took priority, but it doesn't look like actual spending on the playing side has diminished, just the care in ensuring it's spent well?

Well we gave new contracts to the likes of Lomax, Wheeler, Foster, Wilkin etc over the last few years so I can see us operating toward the top of the cap. We do have players who I wouldn't pick myself but a good portion of this situation is down to poor management choices and the poor recruitment choices they have made.

I hope against hope that Brown will shake things up, but my optimism has been tempered slightly with the re-signing of Wellens.

I'd love to hear an honest assessment of that from Eamon. Not the official club statement where it praises him and calls him the best fullback in the world, but hear him candidly tell us why they've done it. Sentimentality is the only reason I can think of, yet we've shown absolutely none of that to any player I can remember in the past. Do they really intend to play him at fullback for another season when he's clearly physically and mentally broken now? He's the complete opposite of the backs Brown normally goes for. Turner could be argued to be a classic Brown signing, pacy, powerful and youthful, so I can understand that one despite his deficiencies, but Wello just doesn't fit.

Brown likes to play people out of position to try and bring different elements out of their game, he also likes his hookers in numbers. So how about this line up

Makinson
Turner
Wellens
Jones
Meli
Lomax
Gaskell
Perry
Roby
TP
Manu
La Franki
Wilkin

LMS
Another prop
Lance
Clough

I think we we seeing what 5 years of poor or no recruitment can do to a team, we are no longer the entertainers, we depend on good go forward to lay the platform for robes to do his stuff or we need penalties.

We can no longer go the length of the field with the backs we have, I doubt any could do the length without getting caught. The backs are basically poor, we've go no back that can make a break or even make anything happen. I'd say they are the worst set of backs I've seen play for saints since I've watched saints. This lot couldn't even lace the boots of the likes of Tanner, Quirk, hunte, loughlin, Neil Holding, tea Ropati, Save Lyon, Darren Bloor, Vievers, mark Bailey, Gus o'donnel, Shane cooper etc.

We've lost some worldclass backs over the super league era, the likes of Newlove, Iro, Gidley, Lyon, Long, Scully Goulding and other top players like Sullivan, Albert, Martyn but we've never replaced them with quality, I know it's near impossible to replace Newlove, Long, Lyon, Scully etc but we should be getting the next best we can.

McManus brainwashed saints fans that we was going with youth, telling us it's the only way forward, telling us we've got the best youth in the country but I'm sorry, that was total tripe, it was us doing it on the cheap! Fair enough, we had a new stadium to pay for but why not just tell the truth? Where is this youth now? We are full of player 30yrs old plus!

I said the lack of recruitment would come back and bite us but I got the usual response on here by the brainwashed was we've got all these great kids so we don't need to bring players in, yeah right!

To be fair though last year was the first year outside the top 2. This is what I mean by unrealistic expectations of a sporting cycle.

Look at the down years at other clubs and look at the years of our slim pickings. There is no comparison.

We were always going to have to come down from winning titles, what happened to the likes of Wigan, Hull, Bradford after their glory days.

If this is our down time then fair enough, but lets not get all amature dramatic and believe we have been hard done to in this time. Where is our brush with relegation, where is our time not making finals and not even looking likely to get close.

For our poorest side since the start of SL, then 3rd is pretty much astounding not discraceful.

Well said

No one is saying we're underperforming though, just that Saints aren't and haven't been trying hard enough to build a squad capable of winning trophies. We'll still be discussing how we just need one or two players when we've past the 10 years without a trophy mark.

Well I see Wigan got beaten by the wire tonight by even more than we did, so should they also be discussing a clear out.

6 years without a trophy is not what we want obviously, but are we not trying hard enough? I'll agree we have got things wrong, but I don't see that as a lack of trying, just a lack of getting it right for the very very top of our sport. If we where not trying, why would we panic by Lance?

Surely if we where not trying we would have just said Lomax and Gaskell are doing ok lets not bother.

I'll say it again - In the last 2 years we'veWon a bidding war for the current 1st choice GB centre
Signed an Ossie international prop
Signed an Ossie international 2nd row
Signed NZ's World-Cup winning full-back
Re-signed TP despite determined competition from money-no-object Wire
Re-signed Sia on a long contract against competition from money-no-object NRL clubs
Signed probably the best 2nd row in the country over the last few seasons
Offered Eastmond the same money as a money-no-object RU club[/list

If that's "a lack of ambition" and "settling for mediocrity" then FFS I hope Saints and Big Mac and co. continue being similarly "unambitious" for at least the next 20 years. "Lack of ambition" for me all the way, please.

We cannot compete with Wire and their accountants in raw financial terms. Nobody can. You're an utter idiot if you think that we realistically could, or that we should be attempting to do so. We are doing pretty bloody well compared to the rest of the league thank you very much.

Please don't talk sense, the doom and gloom merchants will bust a blood vessel. It really doesn't suit their agendas to even consider any of the points that you have raised.

Do you think replacing James graham with a average NRL backrow was good recruitment?

Do you think signing a NRL fullback in lance hohaia to play at stand off is good recruitment?

Do you think never replacing centres is good recruitment? We've played with one centre since willie talau went, we've had wheeler, flannery, jones, Meli all cover there and non have made any real impact!

When McManus publicly told us we will have a team to grace the new stadium, did you think the 3 we brought in graced the stadium?

Also, the retention is shocking