Does the club stick with Mcrea next season with his boring rugby that has been on offer for most of his tenure, with all the new signings we are making will he stop them playing exiting expansive rugby & stick with 5 drives & kick, OR do they bite the bullet get some money from somewhere & pay him off & try & get the likes of Noble or Kear who is apparently unsettled at Wakefield.
Just think we need a big last season at the willows & loads of other dedicated fans doubt Mcrea is the man to do it for us on the past showings & his explainations to games such as last week.
The club needs to make a big decision on this matter now, what we could probably lose in fans coming through the turnstiles financially over the next season would go towards his pay off which the club say they cant afford.

What do fans think?

Your final point about the players not being able to play to different game plans, on a game by game basis arguably highlights one problem with inferior players. They simply don't get it. But, as you say, McRae is arguably guilty of getting the best out of his limited materials through poor communication. Or, perhaps more accurately, communication skills that are poor for this particular group of players... It's pretty hard for me to be sure of anything having never listened into such conversations. The impression I've always had of McRae though is that he has a wonderful philosophy on how RL should be played, but is unable to get this through to his players. They most probably require, as you've said Pev, either a b********g or polite encouragement. I believe the notion of McRae's decent philosophy on RL has been demonstrated before. When he was at Saints, Gateshead and Hull, he was blessed with many talented, quick witted players who soak up the information they're given like a sponge. Looking at their varying degrees of success, McRae's coaching abilities were surely legitimised. However, at clubs with reduced financial clout and subsequently poorer squads, he's really struggled.

John Kear on the other hand has shown how to get more out of an average bunch. He has this brilliant ability to put things into simple terms. Exquisite man-management skills. Subsequently, a bunch of lads with limited capabilities playing to a simple gameplan have invariably performed better than they probably should expect to.

Back to McRae. Let's see how he goes with a better squad of players next year. It really is the only test for my theory.

I do not know even where to start with that lot.
For starters there are other people on here apart from yourself who do actually know a bit about RL
There are certain people on the forum who seem to think only there opinion counts
As for quoting Man United.
26 yrs it took to win the league again (Premiership)
This was done with experienced players and a smattering of youth and a bloody good coach.
Salford have experienced players comimg in now plus a good youth structure but a cr&p coach.
If you honestly think McRae will do any better next year then you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

It's hard to judge McRae, with most cases of the ifs buts and whys already mentioned I'll skip what he has/hasn't accomplished at the Willows. What I will say is, when he was at Hull I always thought they were over achieving slightly. At first I put it down to the Jason Smith factor, then Hull started to sign some good players and they became force to be reckoned with. I can't remember if they got better because of the players they were signing or because the John Kear factor also arrived. I do remember Hull's defence tightened up massively and they looked far better drilled as a team. Now prehaps McRae isn't great with the inter-personal stuff but he does seem clued up on game plan.

So with this in mind McRae could well be the man to put structures in place, but if you're trying to develop young players maybe he needs a really good assistant coaching the players all the basic stuff. An area where we seem make a fair amount of errors. Not sure if Mal is than man for this job, but Alan Hunt is getting quite a good reputation for himself. Hunt is more than qualified enough to coach the backs and if we could bring in another well known local former international, who has also played in the NRL, to coach the forwards then we could have a very good coaching team. I might be dreaming though.

Personally I enjoyed the season we spent in NL1. Although we didn't dominate, we scored some excellent tries along the way. The main criticism I would have of McRae is the fact he let Turner get away. Not everyones favourite player but he had raw potenatial and showed glimpses of what he could do. This is where a caoch with good interpersonal skills comes in. If someone had communicated with Turner a little better we might not have lost a one of our young players.

If you'd asked me a couple of years back I'd have called him overrated maybe reaping the benefit of the squad building & progression under Brian Noble
* he's pulled a makeshift - albeit quota-free team together at short notice currently lying in a top 8 spot.

As i'm not witness to the training - dressing room I cannot vouch who is making the difference at Crusaders - Iestyn Harris - John Sharp or Brian Noble?

I Guess success in Rugby League as a coach is an alchemy of the following:-
*Finance and Club Set up to aquire sufficient players of calibre and to develop up and comming players to force competition for team places.
*The right balance of training & tactics.
* A coach who can galvanise and deliver that talent & training in a side that wants to play for their team and their coaches.

I don't own or run Salford or the Crusaders ( Thank god ) so i can only speculate what going right or wrong at either club , I summise however we haven't got all three in place at Salford this season