Are you having a giraffe?

Saints' assistant Keiron Purtill is pretty decent, coaches the Canadian national team too. However, he's not even a shadow of Smith, Maguire and Brown. Simmons has done a very good job so far with the situation we found ourselves in, but again that''s another successful Australian.

Unfortunately, British coaches are leagues behind their Australian counterparts and there doesn't seem to be anybody who could even contemplate stepping up to their level.

Shaun Wane based on what? Don't get me wrong, he seems to be doing great at Wigan as number 2 to Fadge but who says he can take the reigns and guide the Pies to consistently boring rugby compiled of lying on and the same attacking play? Taking the P&B specs off, I put a lot to Wane for Wigan's success last year but the day to day running of the club and match tactics for each game is a whole different concept.

Basically if the goons don't take him on as head coach, I think that proves even they realise he isn't up to the job.

Noble is the only one for me. Kear is no better than Cullen in my eyes.

Kear has won two Challenge Cups with non-top teams. He took over Wakefield when they were dire and got them out of a hole and made them a pretty competitive team for a while. Cullen did OK but no better than OK and he got a lot more time than most other coaches would have done. I know a lot of our fans are loyal to Cullen because of his background with us but the reality is he had largely the same personnel that Tony Smith has won two Challenge Cups with and we were never even close to a trophy with Cullen.

The other British coach who looked like he had good potential was Mike Gregory, I know he was only head coach for a year, but Wigan played good rugby when he was in charge and he had them in two finals in his year - after he left, Wigan went downhill a long way. I think Mike Gregory, had illness not intervened, would have been the other British coach to have done well, although knowing Maurice, he would doubtless have been fired from Wigan within a year or two. I often wonder whether Mike Greg would have ended up coaching us.

The last national express coach i was on did the business. it would have pi@@ed over noble going round a bend as it's contents reached overflow
and with anymore of a turn it would have shat over shaun wayne and any other coaches you can mention.

Wigan after getting Sculthorpe to be Wane's assistant next year. Not sure if they're going to announce it on Boxing Day, though.

Paul Anderson was doing OK at the Giants before and after John Sharpe. He will have had 4 years under Nathan Brown at the end of next season. We're hoping he will be THE top coach.

Shaun wane

Decent coaches, yes, international class, no.
It's exactly the same with wendyball. Look at the same names that pop up everytime a job becomes vacant. ( Both sports).

I get the feeling that coaches/managers are scared of letting players do what they are capable of doing, and would rather get a win playing ugly/boring/safe rl/wendyball, than being entertaining.

It's fair to say that the quality of both sports at top level has declined in the past decade. ( teams with British coaches). For wendyball, its the Manure team of 99, since then, bloody boring like the rest. The only teams that were'nt, were the best to watch; Newcastle under Keegan and Blackpool last year. For RL, I'm struggling for the last truely entertaining British coached side.

Wether the introduction of coaching badges has anything to do with it, I don't know, but I suspect it has.

john kear is ok i guess.

It's professional sport. Isn't winning all that matters?

I cant see mac doing the job as England boss but good luck to him anyway!

Cullen whatever his shortcomings as a coach always coached his team to play entertaining rugby.....that can not be disputed in my opinion.

Graham Appo, Brent Grose, Kevin Penny, are just some the great entertainers(Trade mark courtesy of Saint Helens) that all played an exciting brand of attacking Rugby League under Cullen.

he just lacked a bit in other areas.

He was not unfairly treated at all. He had more than enough time to deliver, post money, than we would have given any other coach in professional RL including Tony Smith following his arrival. It's also open to debate whether he "saved us from relegation" (facts suggest that Plange did just as much if not more). The simple thing is he could not deliver SL results vs salary cap and lived in a delusional world where he thought he could and would brush away any criticism whatsoever and allow players he was far too close with to get away with absolute murder off field. We also had a very poor defence (on average conceding 22-25pts per game) and a 'pick and choose' attitude to games in which his players would compete.

He should have resigned, with grace and dignity, a long, long, time before the inevitable hounding out/sacking (which came far too late). It felt a lot like him desperately clinging on by his fingernails to the levers of power. I believe it hurt every wire fan just as much to see his protracted, almost tortuous, demise and how he would not fall on his sword when he could see the writing on the wall. I've never thought him the real deal and I've always maintained he was coaching at the biggest club he would ever coach at and I see nothing to change that view. It's no surprise I guess why he desperately clung on to it for so long.

He dined out on currying favour (despite adverse results) with being a hard centre/second row Wire player in the 80/90's for far too long which is sad for us all. He was my childhood hero. But he was given a very generous amount of time to deliver and he didn't. TS had us winning a cup within months, simple as that.

Does anyone really think if PC was still in charge we would be CC winners 2009 and 2010?