Well, the academy and external recruitment are essentially both the same thing, a source of new / better talent. Clearly the academy production line has not been providing the number of squad players that we need, hence we have had to rely on external recruitment.

If you have a high quality coach then you can mitigate the lack of quality of the squad simply because he uses better tactics on the day, gets more from individual players, switches players to better positions, generates better team spirit etc etc. A good example of that would be Salford over the last two seasons where they even managed to get to a GF. I think most people would agree that SP is not in that category, indeed Salford have beaten us in all four games over the last two seasons.

In order to be successful we need a good quality squad and coach in combination. As LTS pointed out, we do have quality players in the squad but we have failed to recruit two decent bench props and brought in two poor replacements in Latu and Akauola. We also recruited Burrell, and whilst he would not have gone on the cap., he will still have been expensive. Similarly Blake Austin and Tyrone Roberts before him have been average,......but expensive. Our track record has simply not been good enough in recruitment. So that disadvantage combined with a pretty ordinary coach (who I suspect will also be very expensive) is probably the reason we have failed to challenge at the top table. We are cash rich but have made some poor decisions (JIMO)

I'd imagine that we are probably aligned with the spend of Wigan, Saints and Catalans. Wigan and Saints had the benefit of the reduced marquee spend cap allocation although Wigan have lost that with the recruitment of George Burgess and Bateman/Hastings. Catalans benefit from an Euro exchange rate not seen since before the Brexit Referendum.

You'll also have Leeds and Hull spending to the cap each year but probably not levering the marquee rule as much as we do for the full period it has been available though they appear to be catching up on that now. Then each year you'll have an outlier eg Koucash's Salford, and Huddersfield this year.

So next year there will likely be seven teams paying pretty much the same in salaries and historically over the last five years about five teams. On that basis I don't think we do that bad in respect of performance.

I would say a realistic minimum level of performance would be to win one of the three trophies every two years. On that basis Price needs to win one next year to be at the minimum acceptable level otherwise he goes. The issue we have is we've never won the premium one - Grand Final.

A fair assessment to my simplistic post my recent memories of our earlier success blighted by the Asotasi and Roberts years where we were top end spenders including forays into the transfer market (paying fees) but obviously going backwards.

A big year for all concerned coming up, we should be better than last season when we whimpered out although as you say we are in the same boat as half the division and yet the 'winning' teams come from a smaller list.

Perhaps our recruitment staff are dithering over signing decent players due to financial juggling . Recently we have been picking up left over overseas players that no other club wants & cast offs from our rivals.
One of the biggest changes we need to make is to our scouting set up & to decide what our best recruitment policy is.

Actually, playing devils advocate here, How would posters feel about price, if he'd took the grand final in 2018, but every thing else had been exactly the same for the following 2 seasons?

Would those of us wanting rid, still want rid, or would you be willing to put up with what we've had because of a GF win in the bank?

i'm intrigued to see if people would still want the board to be ruthless.

Well that is just speculation or guess work. But the fact we have not won the premium one is why these discussions arise.

Grand Final in his first year, considering what he inherited from Smith, followed by a Challenge Cup win over Saints the next season would have given him at least two blank seasons before any questioning around his position could even start to be thought about for me.


Does Price being the first Head Coach with a proper interest in the Academy and the development of those players not buy him additional time? Lots of people going on about academy player development letting us down (don't buy that myself to the same extent personally - count each club's academy products in last year's Dream Team) that really is not a short term fix that switching of leadership will assist.

Some excellent points BUT Austin and Roberts in the same category,? I’m afraid I strongly disagree!

This is a good point for discussion.

I think the fan base would be more chilled out, because we had won the big one, so some of the short term angst about why have we spent all this money and never won it, would have gone.

Also being the coach to deliver our first GF would mean a certain section of the fanbase will always be on board, just like TS had his bitter-enders like me, who were still on board with him when we were in the bottom eights, or a certain section of the Liverpool fanbase forever reveres Rafa for winning the Champions League.

But for me the calculation about whether the coach is the right one or not isn't about giving a reward for past achievements, it's about whether the coach is better than the next best realistically available alternative, in terms of taking the club forward.

So if the other options are all crap, we have to be really dire, to get rid of the coach.
If Craig Bellamy or someone is available wanting a "fresh challenge" in the UK, then you have to be pretty sure about Price regardless of what he has won in the past.

And most importantly never fall in to the trap of just taking the punt on 'change' when you don't know what change involves, eg "why not make a change, it can't get any worse". It can always get worse. Or "we've done well, but we need someone different now to take us to the 'next level'". Hudds did this with sacking Paul Anderson. Hows the next level coming along?

This is crucial in the recruitment of a coach, or players. TS if not top of the list was certainly very close to it, I'm not sure about SP when he joined, but i doubt he was top of the list. We also had to be patient and wait for TS to become available. However, when you look back at Steve Anderson and David Plange, we are in a far better place than I think we realise.

We have much better resources than the Anderson and Plange era so I don't see that as a reasonable comparison.

Price can be expected to do better.

I'd give him a lot more leeway for having that trophy in the bag.

Yes, it's only winning one game, but trophy wins buy a lot of credit.

Man United fans put up with way more of Mourinho's dross football and alienating man management style than they would otherwise have done because he had a track record of winning trophies, which he transferred to United. They ran out of patience eventually, but extended him more patience than they would otherwise have done.

Well obviously it didn't buy Price much credit with the fans because I remember within weeks of that Challenge Cup final win everyone on here was slagging him off for dull rugby and failing in the playoffs after that long losing streak in the second half of the season.

I'm not a massive Price fan but I think his, and the team's achievement in winning the Challenge Cup has been understated. It is the only time I can remember us going up against a team that was clearly superior to us in a final and winning, it was a masterclass of negating a top team's strengths.

Comparisons don't always hold up, but that's why I think the United comparison is a fair one.

It's reasonable, given our situation and resources, to expect a team that plays coherent, decent rugby and a coach that actually improves players rather than them treading water or going backwards in some cases.

I’m all for the Wire and Wolfie media video. Wolfie is probably getting on for being the best known mascot in RL if not other sports too.
Well done KF for that area.
Anyways, there was a time where Aussies would likely be able to only name one SL team, whereas now, they may be able to name a handful and I think Wire would be the first choice in recall in most.