double post.

Please can we all keep on topic and stop the sniping. If you want to get personal do it via PM and stick to the AUP.

Thanks.

I was on topic. Yet again someone else had to start with the insults.

I don't care who started it. I'm finishing it. Anyone who wants to argue can take a rest!

Ooooooh I LOVE it when you get all masterful.

Although I suspect that they'll stick with him until the end of the season I hold out hope that they'll give him the boot if the crowds are consistently low. Incidentally I thought it looked like more than 10,000 today. Where's our next 9K+ crowd coming from though? The Harlequins and Crusaders games could be sub 7,000.

I agree with all of that.

What embarrassed me most yesterday was having built my kids up pre-season only to have my ten year old tell me before we started that we'd get beat by 30 points because we 'don't have as big a team' and 'we always do the same things and can't defend'. Despite the evident logic of this position I naively and overly optimistically argued that this wouldn't be the case any more...

So can I suggest we appoint my son, he's nearly 11 and would probably take the job for an improvement on his £2 per week pocket money

"We weren't at the races. We expected to perform better but there were obviously reasons for that and we need to rectify that." McNamara

A simple question would be does he know what these reasons are? He said similar last season on lots of occasions and has shown no sign of rectifying the problems. I know he has to put on a brave face in front of the media, but I wonder what his thinking really is - why does he think things are not working out? I wonder whether the GPS innovation is his idea of a technical fix, if you can just know a little more you can make things work, if that's his thinking it suggests he might be really struggling for ideas. By this point, this far in to a long contract presumably he's tried everything he knows and it's not working. I just wonder if he can admit to himself that this is the case? His only really decent spell was when Brian Smith was helping him out, we need that type of experience back to help him out if we're not going to get rid, he's a good assistant but not a Head Coach as is clear now.

I don't tend to read much into what McNamara says in the media, he's not likely to bag players in public However, we can all see what's going wrong on the pitch and the reasons for it. Can he rectify the problems? I doubt it now. The same failings crop up repeatedly despite him being in the job for going on for 4 seasons. They're not little things but basic fundamentals of how the game is played. The only answer must be that the players do not respond to his instructions, perhaps he really is just a good assistant and lacks the authority to get players to follow the gameplan?

Maybe they just can't tell what the hell he is saying to them. I certainly struggled to understand him when he was in the studio for Friday's SKY match!

I still believe it will take time for the imports to bed down and develop closer relationships with the other players. We just need a bit more bonding etc

When you consider most of the senior leaders from last year have left it is obvious it is gonna take time. Remember that Leeds have also lost two and they are meant to be the best in the league!

Rome was not built in a day!

Four seasons is a little longer than a day and last year's team was one he had put together as well. If he dismantles this one at the end of the year should he get another chance, on a third time lucky basis? It's not the personnel, other coaches have done better with worse and some continue to do so. Nor is it 'gelling', for pity's sake L'Estrange, Hall and Orford have all played together for years and with Menzies we have four of the team that won the 2008 NRL title, it's the complete failure of the system under which they're playing, that's the problem. They can gel all they like but it won't change the (lack of a) game plan.

Well.

Quite, quite depressed. I actually belived quite a lot of the pre season optimisiom. I thought we'd signed some quality at half back, we have some good youngsters coming through and whilst we were never going to blow the competition away I fully expected us to be competitive. But we all saw what actually happened.

I spent most of last season trying to find positives and defending the club and coach. There appears to be no defense available to me today. I don't think I'm in a Macca in or out gang, but I now think we need a change. I absolutly hate writting this in week 2, it seems such a cr@p thing to do but I'm just trying to call it as I see it here and now, which ever round it is.

I have some issues with lots of comments flying around; New players "bedding in"? I'm sorry, whilst there is a small measure of this I'm pretty sure we've just had a long pre season with enough trial games to show more than what we are doing, the crusaders have a new team assembled within 8 weeks and are off the mark. Hull have a new 7, new aussies and look good. Wigan have a new coach and look good. Leeds have no "bedding in" to do and look poor. Thats a weak excuse for me and is only a small factor, good players are good players and the combinations and tactics should be bedded in in preseason, whilst I agree it takes time to perfect the combinations they should be present in week 2.

As others have rightly said, we looked tactically lost (any set moves involving more than 2 people in the saints 20?), defensively weak (inability to clamp the ball carrier and too many people waiting for others to make the difference in close defence, and how many times are we caught short in numbers out wide??) , and unable to create a chance never mind finish one, I couldn't work out a plan A nevermind plan B. How much possession did we have in the 2nd half? Far more than saints but how often did you just know it wouldn't come to anything. No ideas.

Saints were good, especially in defence, but we were terrible. If you change assistants, change captain, change scrum half, change stand off but manage to look worse than the poor side you were last year what is left to change? I no longer think we can just wait and hope it comes together, whats the point in bringing through good kids if the team is bottom, uncompetitive and bleeding fans and money?

And no, I dont know if or how we can afford it or who would be available, or indeed if its the right thing to do ultimately, but that doesn't preclude me from saying its broken and I now belive the answer is a new coach. (4 years and we were worse yesterday than at any time in that 4 years IMHO) I think there would be plenty of applicants for the job, and I would maybe pay for it, (if needed) by selling [iany [/itwo senior players who we could realisitcally replace with juniors or cheaper loan signings, and use that freed up cap space for the new coach and assistants.

We'd be a worse team in the short run but I'd take a weaker team in the short run (until the new guy can restructure over next off season) with a new coach, over the excisting coach and excisiting players, for example; McNamara with Worrancy, Godwin, Nero, Sherriffe or new aussie coach with Olbison, O'Brian, Crookes, Wardle/A.N.Other?? and some freed up cash to pay for the new guy? I think I'd take the 2nd option today. (and I'm not picking on any player in that list, just looking at options)

Sorry for the rant, but it made me feel slighty better to vent my spleen. I hope against hope that McNamara starts to prove me wrong on Friday, but I have seen nothing to encourage me in the opening two weeks that that will be the case.

I'll still be there cheering for a Bulls win, but its only blind faith at the moment.