www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19804702

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19804702

By how we've come on under Tony it helps to show current and future players that the sacrifice all through the season is worth it in the end. So it helps kill that horrible regular drinking culture.

One of the best things Tony did when he first came in was to drop Lee to the bench for a game.

Get rid of Martin Gleeson for me.

you know what's surprising about that, he was big fan of glees for gb/eng.

made him captain temporarily, and also moved him to stand off for a time (which we also did, remember that? crazy days)

Obviously he saw a different side of him when he got here.

It's amazing what you see in people when you see them every day compared to in short bursts. Obviously his attitude while at Warrington was one of them things.

mind he did say, he wanted people commited to warrington at the time, and i know gleeson was trying to get himself an nrl deal at the time, we even came out and sais we'd release him. so, maybe it was just that, rather than 'the other' stuff.

What ever it was I think that the 'other stuff' will have had a considerable influence on Smith's decision. Possibly one of his best long term decisions for the club, especially when you look at what's happened to Gleeson since then.

Turning points :

Tony Smith arriving
Dropping Briers as soon as he could, Smith was in charge !!
Getting rid of Gleeson as soon as he could
Beating Hull KR in the 2009 CC quarter final, coming back from 2 scores down with 15 minutes left
Wembley win #1

Cullen never, ever, addressed this. He said in a 2002 ST meeting "If you think it's bad now [drinking culture] you should have seen it in the 80's"*. I knew then he was too close to the players and going about it all wrong. I also said he was coaching at the biggest club he ever would. Sadly true. Still I'll remember him now as a legend centre/SR rather than an "Emperors Clothes" coach.

*He also said "Warren Stevens was the best player in the lower leagues by a mile" hence the signing.

I'd really like to get to know Tony's methods more although I realise that won't be possible.

For example did he come in and stamp his authority and put an end to the drinking culture (assuming we had one) by laying down a hard and fast rule about it immediately.

Or did he come and just start tweaking the culture at the club. Did it get to the point where the players made what they thought was a conscious choice to be more professional in that aspect as if they didn't they wouldn't be in line with the wider professional culture at the club?

Maybe binning Gleeson was better than actually making a statement.

Yeah maybe. Again we are making assumptions based of rumour. May be it happened like Cat said? Who knows.

I know a lad that's worked in a favourite 'bar' of our players. He says they used to come out as one a few years back, but since Smith has come in he's stopped them going out in 'packs', instead they only go out in small quantities.

He also says you won't see any of them out before games and stuff, which used to be a regularity 'apparently'.

I imagine Smith just came in and started to see the things that were ignored under previous 'regimes', the changes were obvious, him actually being a fantastic coach is just a bonus.

The odd thing with this is Cullen was not a weak character. He was not afraid to lay down the law with other people at the club, media etc. But he did not enforce strict discipline on the players in the way that Tony Smith has done.

I suspect it all comes down to respect and the power balance between a coach and his players, which is always there, unspoken or not. Jack Gibson said the most important thing a coach could have is respect, but it is either there or it isn't, and if it isn't there is no way you can command respect just by coming over as tough.

Our better players like Gleeson and Briers, had more power than Cullen and they knew it, if he had tried to bring in a regime they hadn't accepted he would have had no chance, he would have 'lost the dressing room'. So he had to keep them onside. Tony Smith came in with two Super League titles and a World Club Challenge on his CV so he had power and respect from the start and this gave him licence to create a harsher regime and have it accepted by the players.

This sort of situation happens a lot in football. You hear about managers that are ousted by player power because the players don't agree with their methods. Andre Villas Boas was a classic example at Chelsea, all the senior players came out against him, they didn't like his strict training methods etc. But Jose Mourinho had them training ruthlessly hard and they accepted it from him. The difference was Mourinho had the Champions League on his CV with Porto, whereas AVB was the same age as his senior players, had never played professional football, and they had seen him as a junior a few years back when he was one of Jose's research assistants. Jose can make players do things that AVB can't, in the same way that at City Mancini can make players do things that Mark Hughes couldn't.

Interestingly even Brian Smith has fallen foul of this in recent years. Like Tony he is well known for being a disciplinarian but whereas in the early part of his career he was regarded as a coaching guru, the lack of a Grand Final win has damaged him and when he takes over a club you hear senior players grumble (made worse by the fact the press actively go hunting for it) because they don't like his strictness and without a Grand Final win on his CV maybe he isn't big enough to hold that respect over guys like Jamie Lyon and Andrew Johns.

The one coach that had the power to come in to his first job and rule with an iron fist without having achieved anything in coaching before was Ellery Hanley at Saints. But that's because it's Ellery Hanley.