Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.

Wire career over?

It's not a good look because you can tell he's struggling to handle the pressure. 

I have some sympathy with coaches because in these media conferences some people ask the most banal questions. No preparation or real thought before going in, they just say whatever comes off the top of their heads and often reveal a lack of knowledge of the game. Other times a journo is trying to set up a 'gotcha' question. And when the coach is coming in off a loss and emotions are running high its easy to get exasperated. 


Still, there's an art in diffusing the questions and giving a politicians answer. It seems from that interview that the questioner was banging on about Danny Walker at halfback. Sam could have just said "Danny wasn't the reason we lost the game today...." then go on to give a few reasons giving praise to Leigh. If he thought the journos were talking crap he could just fill up the time by talking himself. In the end the journalists just want to get some quotes and then they're happy so a coach can take charge of the agenda. Don't get into a back and forth with them. Worst of all don't go down the road of "what do you think", it just makes the coach look like he's got rattled. 


You sometimes get a coach who likes to chat to the media when things are going well, then when he gets surly it's a sign that the end is looming. In football Ange Postegoglu at Spurs is a good example. Cullen was a bit grumpy sometimes but he managed to keep things under control. When he was in a bad mood, he would just sit in press conferences and give very short, clipped answers and then wait until the journos ran out of questions. He didn't give tetchy responses. 


Tony Smith was good at keeping it together and not looking rattled in a press conference but sometimes that can annoy fans too. They think the coach doesn't care. The best I've ever seen at handling the media in a classy way was Mike Gregory. He was on another level. No matter what the question he was generous, charming and funny. I once saw a novice camera woman at a Wigan game wander up to him after he'd had a defeat and ask him who the players were in some of the photos she'd taken so she could get the names right when she filed it. 99% of coaches would have lost their rag at that, Mike G stayed with her and went through all her pictures telling her which players were in them. 


At the other end you get the obnoxious types who view journalists as beneath them and delight in being sarcastic and mocking them, thinking it makes them look clever. James Lowes was like this. In football, Tim Sherwood. And in politics, Kemi Badenoch. 

I wasn't too impressed with the Edwin Ipape "tackle" on Fitzgibbons. Let's hope it has not causes serious damage to his knee. It did not look good and totally unnecessary. 

Here's a question....who out of our current squad would be snapped up if they became available? That should give us a true picture of where we are.


I'd say Dufty, Ashton, King, Williams, Walker, possibly Currie, Sneyd & Holroyd, but that's about it, and I'm probably being generous.


Says it all really, mid table at best, another season over before it's barely begun.

I'm afraid so, we have seen it all before and can spot it a mile off. The duffers on Facebook think we will turn it round and win the GF and that we should "back the team 100%". 

Interesting you have added King to that list. He is out of contract this season and of course we don?t know what?s happening in the background but also not heard of any clubs showing interest in him.

Good post. Yeah he is rattled (unsurprisingly as his dream of NRL coaching is hanging by a thread). We saw this instability when he reacted about being asked about Vegas by Chapman on live BBC and it's continuing. It's unnecessary and comes across as petulant. 


I get he doesn't want to bag his players, and Walker was not the reason we lost, but the question could have been answered without drama. These are not Pulitzer prize journalists asking difficult, incisive, questions, they are local/regional rag reporters just looking for a copy line. 

Good question. I'd add Vaughan and Harrison to the list.


But the list narrows when you ask which of those would be snapped up by a GF aspiring SL side (Wigan / Hull KR / Saints), and which would go to the also ran clubs (like us).

Well if I was in the market for a centre I?d be all over Lindop rather than King. Hoping Wrench has an injury free run and irons out his defence (big ifs) - him and Lindop would be a very dangerous pair of centres. Our current centres being no real attacking threat at present. 

Lindop is going ti be a top player, not sure about Wrench. To be fair to King he was one of the few that looked threatening against Leigh. 


But to have two natural, pacey centres with evasion who can tackle would be a dream come true. 


Tai hasn't built any attacking skills since last year so, likeable character as he is, I wouldn't extend him. 

This is the killer question, it's why I drew a distinction between the TS era and the Price era in terms of saying "with the squad we had we should have won the Grand Final".

In the TS era our rivals would have coveted lots of our players, you could make a case that the Wigan team who beat us in 2013 would have replaced over half their starters with ours if they had the chance. Leeds - maybe not. Their core was better than ours. But it was legitimate to say we had the team to win the Grand Final.

But this was still being said in the Price era when it wasn't true. At the start of every season in the Price era I'd predict us to be about 5th and outside chance of winning the Challenge Cup and on here people would say no, who's better than us, we've got the squad to match Saints/Wigan/Cats. I never saw it. I would always think - if each member of our squad was available how many would the top teams be interested in?

We saw the answer after they left, it was only Cooper and Clark. I would have added Hill to that list who IMO was good enough to play for a top team when he joined Hudds. 


Right now...I almost daren't ask the question...