It is more than just drills and staying fit. There are mental aspects to it; a player selected for this squad is bound to gain confidence and self belief. They mix with new players, they will see other players train, they are exposed to new coaches, facilities etc. The amount of benefit that a player will gain from it is open to interpretation and opinion but it certainly wont be doing them any harm, will it.

I don't think it's paranoid or delusional pointing out clear patterns in the mans selection and how the justifcation for some of these selections actually contradict each other. That historically reasons for not selecting certain players seem to have flown out of the window this time.
It's certainly better than saying Mickey Higham should get picked despite having 3 in front of him for one position because he played for them last year when we got our a4ses royally exposed!

If they make it into the final squad, they will.

At the moment its more a case of telling them not to book any holidays and lay off the pies/booze just in case they might be needed.

I accept the point with Higham and the risk of injuries. You can't apply that to every selection he has made though and the arguments I've read justifying some of the other selections do not stand up IMO.

Well that's a fair point I suppose. We shall have to wait and see what the final squad gets whittled down to. In a way ot doesn't even matter anyway, I think we're going to get pumped!

Actually i think there is a negative effect.
If Bridge got anywhere near playing for England this year it would be yet ANOTHER season Bridge didnt get a proper pre season. If the lad hadn't had the disaster injuries of recent years im fairly certain he'd be up there in the running for the test spot now.
Id rather he spent the offseason getting fully fit and sticking a stone or so on him

I fear he is doing it out of embarassment at not picking a player. He doesn't want to turn up to Warrington training with the players he didn't pick thinking he doesn't rate them.

I haven't got a problem with Harrison being involved, he's impressed me this season and although he's never ready yet, he is a potential star of the future so it's good for him to be there.

The inclusions of Bridge and Higham though are a complete joke and make a mockery of it all. Neither are good enough for Super League let alone an international series against the World champions, and Australia.

I think the train on squad is a good idea. It's all very well picking 13 of who are considered the best english players and claim its a team. its very different in practice. It's far better to pick 13 players who can play to the coach's system and play as part of a team. too often in the past we've had 13 individuals on the field and they've had their collective backsides handed to them. noble was accused of similar bias, however he saw the bradford players every day, knew what they were capabile of and that they would play well to his system.

smith is doing nothing different to that or what all successful managers do
ie pick players to fit a system, not fiddle with a system to try and accomodate players

At the end of the day, does it really matter what Smith does?


You don't have the cattle.

Harrison has impressed me but for me, Bridge probably doesn't deserve to be there. Average personified.

I don't understand why people are questioning Tony Smith's credentials when he has delivered at all three clubs he has coached at over here. Add into that the fact that all three were big underachievers and that's an even bigger feather in his cap. Right now he is the right man for the job given that we can't attract Wayne Bennett or someone similar.

I think it shows the compleate lack of centres we have in this country at the moment, to be fair though, Bridge has been excellent since big time charlie left for Wigan. I know people on here don't belive it what the stats say but Bridge's stats at centre are quite decent, 15 clean breaks, 12 try assists, 8 tries, 65 tackle busts, and nearly 1600 metres made.

In which case why no call-up for Kirk Yeaman of Hull who has done marginally better in the majority of those stats despite playing less games?

Yeah and Bridge has only played around 15-16 of his 20 odd games this season at centre.

So basically, why bother discussing the pro’s / cons of having a club coach being in charged of the national side, because, the Aussies will destroy us .




Serious question, do Warrington fans really believe that if Smith wasn’t their coach they would still have the same number of players in the squad?

So as a stand-off, you'd expect him to be more creative in attack and also make more metres as he's part of the attacking process more?