just after everyones opinion on his acheivements with the crusaders this season. Me thinks personally he is a very good English coach who may be about to steer them into the play-offs. At the beginning of the season were they not struggling to get a squad together?? looking at the squad they have id say hes worked miracles there. Compared to ours id say we have had a poor season (yet again) and wonder what Mr Noble may have done with us??

I think the fact that in the coaching set up there are 3 top class coaches (Noble, harris and another bloke who's name escapes me) who have all been head coaches at other clubs with sucess probably gives them them the chance to coach the players individually to a higher standard rather than a head coach and one assistant, they must be on mega money so u pay for the quality.

Do we have a assistant coach yet? i feel if good money for an assistant was found for mcrae it would give us a good blend and move us on.

i beleive we will have an assistant coach next year in malcolm Alker.

Think putting Alker in charge of the academy set up would be a better option, he has the benefit of being a player of thier era and who they can look up to. Bring Hunte in as number 2 and hopefully he'll prove what we all suspect in that he is good enough to be given the full time coaching role when SM ends his time with the club.
Think that would be the best way to see if Alker has what it takes and also bring a more attack minded coach in to help give the first team a little more bite than they currently have.

On the origional subject i'd love Noble to be our coach, think the games we loose by the odd point would be reversed and we'd have a very real chance of being in the top 8 already as if you look at the Crusaders squad compared to ours they have over performed and we have under performed. I'd go so far as to say along with Kear he is the best British coach in Super League and it would be a shocking state of affairs if he was lost the RU.

Noble is susposed to be ending his role with Crusaders at the end of the season, Andy Wilson, and Chris Riley both are saying this, Noble is just not confirming either way, but there could be a funding problem.
So should we swap our Internationally known coach with one from the Welsh expansion area?

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?

It does seem that if your post count is under fifty you're not allowed to write positive comments...

I doubt anything will happen with McRea. If the Club wanted to 'find money' I'm sure all of the cash that's flying about with contracts and new signings would have gone on getting rid, if the Club truly felt like they needed rid of him. The question is not whether they should get rid it's who the hell would come to us?

Another thing that has struck me over recent weeks is that we have been resigning our best players and bringing in talent that we wouldn't normally attract. It doesn't strike me as a bunch of players in turmoil or with the smell of mutiny from the dressing rooms. If players didn't want McRea they wouldn't be signing new contracts and saying how much they are enjoying being at the Club.

Whether you like McRea or not, he is probably going to be in it for the long haul and constant barrages of negativity surrounding him only succeed in undermining the Club as a whole.

Disagree, I'm pretty certain the players are not happy with SM but he has only got 12 months left so they are looking further down the line as I expect SM contract not to be renewed

An average of 7 wins or less a season in SL whilst with Salford is just no good enough.
Baffling decisions, team tactics, boring rugby what else do you want to prove that McRae has been a failure.

I wasn't supporting nor disagreeing, just making a point.

That being, that the Club are very unlikely to get rid.

The coach is always going to be the frontline when it comes to the blame game, but others such as players, decision-makers and other influential figures are equally to blame. I just think that the McRea fixation draws people away from asking questions about the Club as a whole.

Have any of Salford's former coaches managed to average more than 7 wins per season?

Right, before I continue I hereby initially state that in no way, shape or form, am I a fan of Shaun McRae.

For the sake of balanced argument, a concept decidedly lacking on this forum, may I point out a few other contributing factors to Salford's inability to win games.

1) We operate on a budget, as far as I'm aware, that is smaller than any other team in Super League. Indeed, this year, once again as far as I'm aware, we have financed a playing squad on under £1million.
Having a lower budget for players means that the slub simply can't afford players with good reputations or CV's. So, when other club's look to sign current or recent State of Origin/Anzac internationals, we look for whoever's available and in need of a contract.

Summary of point 1. Some club's get ready made thoroughbreds. We get mongrels.

2) Having proven winners at your club has a knock-on (not literally) effect. The younger players coming through the academy structure are able to pick up a wealth of quality information including new skills, a winning mentality, better training methods, heigthened value of dedication amongst many benefits of hanging around with alpha males. The players we have, just don't posess these qualities to the same degree resulting in younger players not receiving a true understanding of what is required to make it at the top.

Summary of point 2. Winner's spread their wealth of knowledge and experience throughout the rest of the squad, producing a fertile ground to grow new winner's.

3) Oh s0d it. I'm wasting my time here. I'm preaching in a language most may not eevn understand...

Look. My main point is that as easy as it may be to just blame the coach, there may well be factors present that create insurmountable objects for the coach. Perhaps the proximity and obsession the good folk of Salford have with Trafford Utd has clouded and interfered with the clarity of vision to see what is required to become a champion side. (I doubt Fergie would be as successful as he is with a budget comparitive with that of a smaller club.)

Don't get me wrong. As many of you know I'm training to be a sport shrink but please, you've gotta have the right materials to work with in the first place. If it was simply down to the coach, you could give him the Langworthy under 12's team and he would mould them into world beaters! But that's the point, the coach can only do so much.

On the other hand, our playing squad is far more competent than I'm giving them credit for and thus, the poor coaching they receive is the reason behind their inability to perform at a consistently high level, week in and week out. One would suppose that the only way to find out would be to see how we go next year. It's already looking like we're going to have a stronger squad and thus, if my theory is correct, Shaun McRae will have better tools to work with and we should achieve more thereof. Playoffs or just about in 2011?

Good post RP, and exactly what I was trying to get at. Namely, the multitude of factors that effect Clubs.

I said, as did a few others, right at the start of the franchise system that we as fans should not judge Salford until the third season. The process of turning a Championship side into a competitive Super League side takes time, effort, and shrewd plans. We are getting there, it's just frustrating to see flashes of what we can achieve mixed in with woeful efforts like last week.

Good coaching provides a platform for a side to either climb higher and realize their potential or slip-off and struggle to get back up. It's not the be-all-and-end-all. Professional players should be just that. Regardless of what they think of a coaches ability, they are payed to play to their best.

I think the pressure is on for our next campaign as the Club has obviously been building for a big push, and it will be interesting to see which direction we will end up going in.

Having studied sports psychology as part of my PE degree, hundreds of years ago, things have not changed, Winning ways breed success, if it feels good do it again similar losing ways breed failure.
But from talking to players and watching some of their body language they are shouting out about that they expect more from McRae, but he does not appear to do anything, so much so quite a few of them (which is very bad for the team) do not appear to have respect for him.
In many cases the coach has to step in and either boll**k or praise the players at the moment he does neither, or the players do not realise he is doing either. On numerous occasions McRae has stated he can not see what is going wrong, he has problems changing a set game play and most other coaches have figured out how we play and we rarely change. McRae has moaned in teh apst that they trained for how the visitors were going to play and they played a different way to the previous weeks video. I was of the opinion that coaches will have many different game plans for the different opposition, he appears to think that our players can not change to play different plans, either not good enough or cleaver enough, so he his saying that he has no respect for some of the players he is coaching.

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.