1. Appointing Agar and extending Smith's contract guarantees both continuity and stability at the club. The players know what to expect, new recruits know the set up they will be joining, and the long term planning that has already been discussed between Moran and Smith can be carried through to completion.

2. Smith knows Agar very well - they get on, and that is extremely important. If a new head coach came in, there would be no guarantee of a close relationship between the two.

3. The coaching style and tactics appear to be very similar between the two of them (according to Smith).

4. If Agar is successful and gets the backing of the players, then he is available to seamlessly take over from Smith when he moves on.

So lots of positives, but the big question for me is how successful Agar is likely to be. Smith is a proven winner of cups, but Agar is not. It is pretty obvious when a player is any good or not, because we can see their performance on the field, but I am not sure as fans how we will know if Agar is a top coach or not until / if he takes over.

He under achieved at Hull, but in the past 15 years every coach barring John Kear has done that at Hull. He initially built a reasonable side at Wakefield for very little money, only to see it dismantled twice due to problems that were out of his hands. I doubt Jack Gibson could do very much with the current Wakefield squad.

Wakefield and Hull have used Agar as the fall guy and the fans have bought it.

Wakey has had financial problems that stopped him building a sustainable and strong squad.

Hull.. Well, Hull hasn't had a good coach for a while so maybe there's an issue with the chairman getting on with people..

With the wallet of Moran and guidance from TS, Agar has the recipe to be a great coach, hence his excitement to join us.

...and don't forget that we are by and large a non moaning fan base

Were you being a tad sarcastic there, Rico?

Thank Christ for that! I thought for a minute you were losing your marbles.

Bit confused over the Poching appointment then moving him on, he was Smiths choice. Clearly Agar is seen as an improvement.

There seem to be a lot of backtracking going on here, we have gone from if Agar comes season tickets wont sell and we could follow the same path as Wakefield to he is a great appointment and the future looks good...

" History is written by the winners"

Where are Richard Marshall & Wille Poaching moving to?

True, but, to be fair to the forum IW I think that most of it was based on an assumption that TS was lining up his replacement next season rather than an assistant

Perhaps Smith, Poching and Marshall think its time that Poching and Marshall had a go at running their own club/team as head coach and despite what drama queens on here may think Smith is going no-where for the forseeable future so that means they need to go elsewhere.

As in politics a week on this forum is a long time. With the revelation that TS is staying till 2016 ,the mood on here has suddenly mellowed & Richard Agar has gone from being the Great Satan to the Messiah-in-waiting. Great to see everybody so chilled now.