Even betterer.

I am also a hardcore Smith loyalist but he did inherit a different situation. He had a squad which was full of very talented players and had just had a bad coaching situation as Cullen's last year was a year too long especially given the other stuff he had to deal with at the time, and Jimmy Lowes was not an SL standard head coach. Powell has inherited a team that had gone stagnant and needed an overhaul.

If TS came back to coach us now, I doubt he would have the same impact he did in 2009.

However, its interesting to consider where we would be if we had just kept on with TS right through and not had Price or Powell. I think it was time for both parties to move on at the end of 2017, but I wouldn't be surprised if we had ended up with a better win-loss record since then if TS had stayed, than what we have had under Price and Powell.

In 2017 we were in the middle 8s after a dismal season. In 2018 we were in the Challenge Cup and Grand Finals. Do you think that if TS had stayed we would have had the same turnaround?

Undoubtedly the right time for him to move on.

Re: squad comparisons, 2009 was very similar but I think people are underestimating the value of the current squad. At the point of signing, Widdop and Williams were star halfbacks. Stars. Ratchford, Cooper, Clark, Currie, Philbin are/until recently were regulars in England squads. Hughes, Charnley, King and Matautia are in and around rep squads in recent history, but not regulars.

That’s every starting squad number other than 5 Ashton and 12 Holmes.

Ashton, Walker, Holmes and Mulhearn have been in Knights squads. From number 1 a 19, every one of them is or was recently an international standard player outside of Bullock, Davis and Magoulias. Powell signed 2 of those three.

I can’t accept that these players have lost all of their ability, I won’t accept that they have lost all of the lessons that they picked up playing with and for international standard coaches and players. The squad is more than good enough to compete. Can the coach not get the best out of them, or is it to be believed that there has been an ability and effort vacuum?

There is a difference in international standards though. Put our internationals up against Aussies & Kiwis & we are soon found out. Our internationals like many first team players are glorified reserves who have been uprated to play in superleague.

Agree, but there are no Aussie or Kiwi rep level players in super league. Comparing against those in the competition, Wayne Bennett and Shaun Wane have, rather consistently, looked at those players and assessed them better than their peers.

Other than Walmsley, there are no props in my opinion that would mix it with the NRL elite. The next tier down, according to Wane, includes Cooper and Philbin. Yet the results on the field don’t reflect that.

presumably you mean current cooper, not cooper that mixed it with the nrl elite for 3 years?

Coopers best form has been over the past 3/4 years or so. While he played in the NRL, and played well, to suggest he was in the ‘elite’ of his position would be an exaggeration. He wouldn’t have been considered for NSW for example.

Graham, Burgess, Morley, Ellis would have been considered in their NRL prime, but we don’t have players at that level right now, other than Walmsley. Bateman maybe a few years back but not so much recently.

Cooper ,most excellent 100% club player & able international ,always does the hard yards & tackles out of his skin.

Bugger, I had just got over Laurie Gilfeddar signing for Wigan ... and now this.

Obviously we can only speculate. We won the League Leaders' Shield and reached 2 finals in 2016 under TS, and then reached 2 finals again in 2018 with Price. If we'd gone on to be consistently successful under Price I'd be more inclined to believe that he was responsible for the transformation from 2017 but having seen the full Price era I'm more inclined to see 2017 as an outlier year where we underperformed and would have likely had a bounceback even under TS in 2018. We did get badly disrupted by the no show from our our key playmaker Sandow just before the 2017 season.

Overall I don't think Price was as good a coach as TS, but its possible the improvement in 2018 was simply due to having a change of face. There was an "end of days" feeling to the TS era almost from the start of the 2017 season, despite having a good year the year before. I felt the same at the start of 2008 with Cullen, and at the start of the Centenary season with Brian Johnson, after Davies and Bateman had left. Almost like everybody knows a change is coming and is just marking time until it happens. I think TS sensed that too.

Probably a minority view here, but I thought the TS era ended in 2013. We’d had five great years with a great squad, but Smith was unable to rebuild that squad when the big guns retired. 2016 was an anomaly for me. The competition was extremely poor that year and we fluked fhe leaders shield, fluffed the cup final, and never really looked favourites for the grand final.

I honestly think that the Saints. Leeds and Wigan of that era would have changed coach after 5 years. That’s the difference between the ruthless professional clubs and us. I am of course extremely grateful to Smith for being the most successful Wire coach of my generation.

Totally agree 100% with this. 2010 - 2013 were magical years. After that it tailed off….

Hard to argue with that, even as biased as I am. I think, Smith believed a bit too much in the ability to make do and mend. When we lost Briers (alongside Morley, Carvell & Hodgson), we just didn’t back fill. Russel, Ratchford and Myler we’re all dangerous but not directional, couldn’t get us around the field. 2014 was forgettable, but still got within touching distance of the grand final. In 2015 we brought in Clark and Sims but that just confirmed our ‘direct’ approach, just running off quick play the balls. We just didn’t get close that year.

We got a genuine half in 2016 and hit the ground running. But for a miracle Houghton tackle we would have had a CC in the bag and a real chance in the final. Sandow’s wheels falling off ultimately took the edge off our attack.

I’m not sure who is responsible, but there was a lack of intent in the market in that period. Wheeler, Bailey, England, Penny, Hughes etc. we’re all bargain buys. It wasn’t until Gidley and Sandow that we saw any real commitment to replace the leadership and creativity void.

I think we did have a bit of bad luck in the transition from the Morley, Monaghan, Carvell etc era.
I suspect that TS expected Harrison and Grix to be mainstays of the pack along with Westwood. Both Harrison and Grix would have played until about 2018/9 if it wasn't for injuries.
You never know what goes on behind the scenes but Paul Wood announcing he was going to Featherstone on the eve of a new season and then In Tony Smith's words the Mickey Higham move being "the strangest transfer he had ever dealt with"
You cannot plan for the tragedy that happened to Dom Crosby and Mitchel Dodds breaking his leg after playing 20 mins for us.
So all of that meant panic signings like Ryan Bailey etc. Dont get me wrong there was some poor choices but I also think that later in the TS era the player power had started to take hold. This was mainly due to lack of leadership within the playing group. We did try and sign leaders like Gidley but I just dont think he had the clout in the dressing room because established players had decided they had had enough of TS.
Like I said there were some strange decisions like Gary Wheeler but there was also some bad luck.