Saints poor start to the season has forced Royce Simmons to step down.
Not many had this guy as the first coach to go !
IMO its far to early in the season, but he's gone.

Coach pays for players failings.

Coach pays for poor recruitment, I'd say.

Saints have failed to adequately replace Graham, recruited a player in Hohaia that IMO is hugely overrated and have found themselves with Francis Meli as one of their first choice centres. Add in Perry being a complete flop in SL and someone needed to carry the can for the poor start. Even if they were recruitment decisions made over Simmons' head, the board are highly unlikely to take the blame for it.

Soon as Roby got injured they became a very ordinary team overnight.

Surely the board would't make the recrutement decisions without his input. I've been a RL fan for many years and if i won the lottery and bought my club i wouldnt dare think i knew better than a top player or coach.

It does happen, It happened at Wigan for years, Maurice would go to Aus and bring back a Trent Barrett or David Vaelliki with little or no input from the coach.

Simmons is an assistant coach who was out of his depth at head coach level. He has this policy of having a back on the bench, who is there to cover injuries. If there are none that player either doesn't play at all or plays 8 minutes in place of another back. So effectively Saints have played every game under him with 16 men and with the reduced interchanges to 10, it's a pretty stupid thing to do, especially when we are light in the front row anyway. He also has this rotation policy where two or 3 needless and not particular beneficial changes are made each week, which disrupts the momentum of the side.

There are rumours he had fallen out with the players over the tactics used and the type of rugby we were playing. In that kind of scenario it's never the players that lose out, it's always the coach.

As for the recruitment issues, those are genuine faults. If he was involved in that, he clearly deserves sacking. If not, it's because the club has been so focused on the stadium development that the playing side of things has been neglected for years now. If you look back at the list of ins and outs at Saints over the last 5 years and it's pretty evident that there wasn't the same ambition and desire to succeed as there was previously.

With the stadium built now, hopefully this decision marks the club returning it's focus onto the playing side of things. The rumours that we've signed Jamie Lyon, if true, would also show this.

It's seven games in and they've sacked a coach who got them to a GF last year.

He's not had the best of times so far this year, but he's proven himself more thsn Rush and Cunningham so far, so its more likely they'll do the same or worse.

With Roby, Soliola, LMS back Simmons owuld have still guided that team to a top 6 finish minimum imho.

Top 6 isn't good enough for a team like Saints, however they will be challenging later in the season, probably hoping to do as the Rhinos did last season.

Depends on who comes in and when.

Who is available?

It adds to the rumour I posted last week that Simmons would go and Nathan Brown would come in; the two who are stepping up don't really have any pedigree, so they reek of a temporary fix until Brown is out of contract at the Giants.

Bit hasty to oust him this early, but if as some suggest he's lost the players, then it's probably an exercise in cutting losses in the short term; this could effectively be seen as Saints writing off this season for longer term gains.

To be fair, Laffranchi has been good up front, though he was never going to fill the void left by Graham. While I don't particularly rate Hohaia, I think he's doing a good job at 9 with Roby out. So I don't think they recruited poorly.

Doesn't N Brown keep saying he is going home to Aus?

From what I can gather, Simmons asked for Lance and also wanted Laffranchi as he had coached him earlier in his career.

No, on SL Extra Time he said he hadn't made a decision.