www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... f_success/ Glad to hear it as apparently we had only 6 people on the staff looking after the first team and U19s this season.

www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... f_success/ Glad to hear it as apparently we had only 6 people on the staff looking after the first team and U19s this season.

Great to hear that Omar is supporting Cummins by making the funds available for him to improve the coaching staff.

Can only be a good thing. Hopefully 2nd assistant coach will be a defensive specialist as that seems to be our weak area.

To be honest our defensive plans seem Ok. It isn't that we're not getting to runners or even [in general] leaving big gaps, it's that we're falling off the tackles when we get there and I'm not sure that requires a 'specialist', it's more a case of basic mistakes [and tackling is about as basic as RL gets, imo] being made by too many players.

TBH I'd class tackling technique as coming under remit of a defensive coach. Agree the patterns themselves arent terrible and sliding defense when we have first choice players available has been reasonable.

Our goal line defense has been great this year it our defense 30m up the pitch thats costing us we seem to get broken against far to easily.

Would have though every team would have a defense, attack and kicking coach why should we be any different, wish we could get either Deacs or Long to bad he was snapped up by wigan cant blame Long though for wanting to coach at the best team around.

We can throw names around like Deacon and Long but in truth how many of us know if they're decent coaches or not? We can only go on the the teams they coach. Salford played some decent rugby at times - is that all down to Long?

At Wigan they have more coaches than hot dinners so I've no idea what Deacs does. I expect the Georgesons could tell you and tigertot would tell he you he isn't up to it as he wasn't as a player

In defence it seems to me to be the backrowers that struggle most this season. Around the ruck we aren't too bad but on the edges between the front row and centres we've looked shaky. That kind of shows up in the missed tackle stats for the likes of Whitehead, Addy, Walker and Olbison. We scramble well but this uses up too much energy. If the line was better in the first place we wouldn't have to chase around as much.

I'm certain Cummins knows what the problems are. We can't buy big to get out of it so it's a case of making the odd decent signing and improving what we have. Hopefully the new staff are all part of that.

^AGREE^ with that.

Didnt mean to say that Deacon or long are great coaches just ment to say that if we had them around the younger players eg, Addy/Sammut/Gale could always ask for advise on what to do it x/y/z happened during a game and the best way to utilize a kick.

Think Deacs is like 1st team coach at wigan something like that anyway.

I'm sure a great professional like Deacon would be able to pass on a lot of good advice to young halfbacks.

***awaits tigertot's retort***

I suppose it would be logical, though I'd guess that having to spend time with SL professionals, doing basics, must drive them to distraction...assuming we have a dedicated defence coach?

If they were professionals then they should be keen to constantly improve their game? Though there are some lucky sportstars blessed with effortless skills - the majority of them who get to stand on top of the podium have put in the hard hours in training. Why are the All Blacks top of the other code - because they do all the basics right.

Same reason why wigan are bull dozing the competition, also who would want to get on the wrong side of wane.

Funnily enough Wane as a player was a poor trainer and was dumped by John Monie for that reason.

Well he seems to have recognised the errors of his former ways?

He certainly does. I think McGuire brought in a culture change at Wigan that Wane and the staff and players have bought into. They're the best drilled team in the competition.