I know it's a little sad but last night I was talking to Robbie Farah the West Tigers and Australian hooker about Royce on Twitter. Apparantly all the West Tiger lads had s nice drinking session with him the other day to say goodbye. Benji Marshall even asked for permission to leave the NZ camp.

Robbie Farah said the players are gutted to see him go because his personality is up there with the best, very funny and sarcastic guy apparantly! It was good hearing off a top class international about our new coach, rather than a few no it all West fans.

The world certainly is getting smaller.

Its nice to hear the players have a high opinion of him, but we shouldn't get too carried away of the back of just that. The assistant coach tends to be popular with the players as he's not the one that has to make the big calls and tends to be a lot more friendly with the players than the head coach.

It is another good reference for him though, but the most important one (imo) is that he's rated by Tim Sheens.

To be fair, not many people have anything bad to say about him.

I'm not really up on the whole twitter thing, can you provide a link to this virtual chat?

Hes already Saints best ever coach in Saintsfan's eyes then

Judging by that it's a damn good job we've got no players with a personality left either

Sounds very 'mate' rather than 'manager' to me.

You're not missing much, it basically says

Ash: Reet mate, I'm a Saints fan, what's Royce like?

Farah: Good mate, going for a drink with him later.

It's not an in depth discussion

It depends on him really, he'll have to know that he'll have to take a step back from the players. There are plenty of examples of assistants who make the step up to be decent coaches, it will also help that he is having a completely fresh start rather than doing it with a club that has players coached before.

As I said, its a common thing with assistant coaches. It won't be the same when he's head coach, I'm sure.

Difficult to predict how Simmons will do, but I'd say any NRL coach or assistant coach is a level or two above anything over here. If Maguire can turn some average players into SL champions, then surely Simmons can get an extra gear out of an already good set of players?

Well maybe he could if he had some?

If Simmons can get out of our current crop of Saints players what Millward got out of his crop of Saints players then Simmons can go partying with them every night for all I care!

Agreed. Millward was brilliant for us, by far our best coach during the Super League era in my opinion, and his list of trophies backs that opinion up nicely.

He had his problems, but I would quite happily go through another 'Millward' type era.

I disagree and I would use any of his 50+ point thrashings as evidence. Anyone of our coaches, including Harry Potter would have won trophies with the players at Millwards diposal.
He had his plus points, but some pretty big flaws as well. Perhaps we would have been able to pull the odd GF out the bag, but the likelyhood of us being there would be seriously reduced imo.

We played some amazing rugby league during his tenure - which is getting great things out of his crop of players! (That was the bit I meant)