He must have been hiding his light under a bushel all the time he was with us then.

Heheh I love it how McNamara getting us to the 4N Final must be eating your heart out. You were soooo hoping and praying we'd be crap, and out, so you could have another pop. Never mind, you'll get over it. Just don't take on so, if it upsets you.

Indeed.

A very poor attempt by FA to start an argument on this thread but he has only succeeded in making himself look very foolish indeed.

I am not getting drawn into it.

Yeah right.

What McNamara does or doesn't do with England is largely irrelevant to what happened during his time at Bradford. He had several seasons at the Bulls to mould his own side and instill the vision, belief and free-flowing style of RL that allegedly won you a GF in 2005, but none of this materialised. A large number of signings were simply not good enough, and the reality is that he had a full cap to play with for most of his seasons in charge. How many record losses, embarrassing turn-arounds and 'firsts' that no team would want to be proud of did he preside over?

Winning the Four Nations won't change this. He seems to have improved his coaching style since last year, and England seem a better drilled side than they were under Smith (a far superior domestic coach), but let's not get too carried away. Perhaps McNamara was given the Bulls job too early. A rookie coach shouldn't be allowed to cut his teeth in the head coach job with a SL club though. Not sure how much he really could have picked up as Noble's assistant during the glory days anyway... Applying the Noble-era tactics to a squad of below-par players was a sure fire recipe for disaster.

Sadly, for some, this is true. Winning the 4 nations, World Cup and anything else for the next 30 years wouldn't change this.

Fortunately he will be President long before then.

Mcnamara has left the bulls with a 'Legacy'.

This Legacy is that he had 3+ seasons, in which he decimated the first team squad, and replaced them with players that were not worthy of wearing the RAB. When certain players were clearly not performing, Mcnamara had a habbit of making sure these names were the first on the team sheet.

He did make some astute signings but the 'Team' was not good enough. For this, imo, Mcnamara takes the blame.

Regardless of what he does in the Internationals, I'll always remember his contribution to our club. For this reason, I'd rather not have him coaching at Odsal in the near/distant future.

A prime example of the legacy is the current position of the youth system. For the resourses and effort, which were apparently made, we seem to be further behind other clubs in the league, yet a certain someone made all the fans think they would be world beaters. Give him credit, he does talk a good game!

But whatever he wins internationally would not make him a good club coach. Tony Smith is a great club coach but sucked somewhat as international coach.

Macnamara sucked as a club coach heres hoping he can be a great international coach

It does help having 1 or 2 decent backs to choose from at the moment.

Strange logic. Being a good brain surgeon would not make you a good heart surgeon, either. Or a bad one. But it would fairly entitle people to claim that you can operate.


Did he? Is this the same Tony Smith that was International Coach of the Year in 2007, or are you thinking of some other Tony Smith?

Indeed... Good to see things have moved on since the days of Gardner, Calderwood, Smith and Goulding.