Reg Bowden...?

Who said anything about replacing Smith ? Players have weaknesses or develop bad habits and coaches are there to straighten them out. Smith (unless he believes he is god) will realise he too makes mistakes. We learn from our mistakes, correct them, and move on. I am sure TS, with some 'friendly encouragement' from uncle Simon, is analysing his decisions and correcting errors. But this year has already gone, barring some Wigan-esque luck in the CC of course.

For me, I won't make a decision on Smith on the performance of the team for a long while yet. Well into next season for me.

But in the last few years his, and his board/management team's, player loss and recruitment has been poor for me. We've lost King, Anderson, Solomona, Morley, Carvell, Cooper, Briers, Hodgson and moved Atkins (in from a left edge of Atkins-King-Anderson) and have seen huge injury problems with MMonaghan, Bridge and Harrison especially.

What we've been left with is an inferior team. There have been individual successes (Chris Hill for example; excellent!) but the whole product is inferior. Which tells me that the board/Smith haven't been serious about making this club a genuine top club. We've needed to [ipush on[/i from this good little spell of three Challenge Cup wins and a few Grand Final appearances, not regress.

But there could be a longer term plan for all this than what we're looking at in the short term. Maybe this year will see many younger and lesser squad members from years past learn how to become leaders and better players while we then go on and recruit better in the coming years. Leaving us in a position come two years time where we'll be a serious club ready to take on the lot. Who knows...

Unless - and this is something someone else has said to me - that Moran's money was put in for that particular team we've just seen over the last few years. The recruitment drive then Smith's appointment and the further recruitment drive was done in the expectation that we would go and win a few Grand Finals, Challenge Cups and even World Club Challenges. Maybe what we've seen has been an underachievement from what was expected and now the money is going to be going in in less amounts and fewer recruitment drives. It would make sense from what we've seen. We're well below the Salary Cap, we're well below the overseas quota, we've let a lot of big bucks players go and we're not as good as we have been over the previous five years.

The one thing Tony Smith deserves, with his achievements at Wire, is plenty of breathing space from the fans at times like this - He also deserves to be able to decide his own future at this present time and should not be under any pressure from those up above, or on the terraces, over his job.

BUT, like I said earlier, the one thing that we all wouldn't want to happen (Smith, the Board, the fans), is for things to go stale - Its been five years, things have mainly been fantastic, but it would be unrealistic to think that he could keep that going. Inevitably, we are/were going to hit a sticky patch, not just the odd 2 or 3 match bad spell, but a bad season.

Smith does deserve the chance to rectify things, but I would like to think that he would not cling on to the job in a Paul Cullen style, where everybody could see that things needed changing, but nobody had the bottle to do anything about it, until it was about 2 years too late.

Ultimately, we are going to have take this season on the chin - Let's judge TS in 12 months time, after he has had chance to really wield the axe, and then we can really see if this downturn in fortunes is just a temporary one.

There is not going to be much wielding of the axe. Look at the squad list from here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=565030&tsmp=1397318001 The players out of contract at the end of this season are: M Monaghan, Waterhouse, Dwyer, Laithwaite, Penny, B Evans, D Bridge, Shaw, Burke, Ormsby. Of these only Monaghan and Waterhouse are likely to be on significant salaries so that really means we can bring in about two established players. The squad next season is going to be more or less the same as it is now.

There is not going to be much wielding of the axe. Look at the squad list from here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=565030&tsmp=1397318001 The players out of contract at the end of this season are: M Monaghan, Waterhouse, Dwyer, Laithwaite, Penny, B Evans, D Bridge, Shaw, Burke, Ormsby. Of these only Monaghan and Waterhouse are likely to be on significant salaries so that really means we can bring in about two established players. The squad next season is going to be more or less the same as it is now.

Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"There is not going to be much wielding of the axe. Look at the squad list from here: viewtopic.php? ... 1397318001 The players out of contract at the end of this season are: M Monaghan, Waterhouse, Dwyer, Laithwaite, Penny, B Evans, D Bridge, Shaw, Burke, Ormsby. Of these only Monaghan and Waterhouse are likely to be on significant salaries so that really means we can bring in about two established players. The squad next season is going to be more or less the same as it is now.'" Isn't that assuming your up to the cap this year?

Quote sally cinnamon="sally cinnamon"There is not going to be much wielding of the axe. Look at the squad list from here: viewtopic.php? ... 1397318001 The players out of contract at the end of this season are: M Monaghan, Waterhouse, Dwyer, Laithwaite, Penny, B Evans, D Bridge, Shaw, Burke, Ormsby. Of these only Monaghan and Waterhouse are likely to be on significant salaries so that really means we can bring in about two established players. The squad next season is going to be more or less the same as it is now.'" Isn't that assuming your up to the cap this year?

Thats a fair point we did lose four players that were likely to be large earners this year and only brought one in. However that space could have been eaten up by existing players getting contract upgrades: we do have a few that signed new longish term contracts so this might have been on better terms.

I heard Tony Smith once on the radio before the season kicked off say that there was room in our cap for a signing.

Wouldn't surprise me to see 3 senior players brought in next year (depending on who you release) - aka you guys are are running a player under this year.

The problem is which players are options to bring in...

Out; Briers, Morley, Hodgson, Carvell, Cooper, Blythe, Tyke

We know Carvell was on £135k/yr, so those first four were probably about £600k of cap

In;
Asotasi, Russel, England, Penny

Penny was peanuts (15,k) and the other two were not established SL standard, so probably less than Cooper and Blythe.


So excluding salary upgrades, there was probably a fall of around £450-500K in our salary cap last year.

out. you forgot solamona

£385 under this year!