I agree with Sally. We do need to get real. We will be under severe financial pressure at the moment. Look at contracts and when they run out before trying to ramp up the pressure on the club. If I had pumped thousands of pounds into the club I would be fed up of the bleating on here. You can't always get what you want by stamping your feet & crying like a very spoilt child. By the way I am not a deluded fan of Price but I can see the tension that our "fans" on here will be causing.

I don't think it means that the club is 'happy to accept mediocrity' at all. Sacking Price will cost a big chunk of change that the club simply does not have right now. Are the directors expected to fund this themselves on top of the reported money they have already contributed this year? Even when their businesses are feeling the Covid 19 pinch? Plus as others have said, sacking Price does not solve the problem, as who would they bring in? In fact, the reason we ended up with Price was because no-one we were more interested in was available. Rinse and repeat? In my view, the smartest thing to do ( given that Watson is headed to Huddersfield ) would be to be talking to Shaun Wane about what he does after the 2021 RLWC is over.

I take your point of the cost of sacking Price but if we wait like you say what is going to be the long term cost. Now here I’m entering the world of speculation but if we have another season like the previous what is going to be the cost of that, some on this forum have already said they will not be renewing/ buying season tickets maybe not even going to games.Have the powers that be weighed that up we won’t know of course because we are not privy to that. I’ve said it many times sport is a results driven business win and fans turn up lose and they don’t I have actually witnessed this when I use to stand in the south stand empty spaces where people I recognised no longer went to games. Fans are fickle it’s that simple it’s no use saying they are not proper fans it doesn’t matter it’s about numbers through the turn style, so if the cost of sacking Price is high what may the cost of losing fans be in the long term.

The problem is, going into a final year of a contract, the pressure turns towards the club at some point. If we get off to a good start, we may think it is in our interest not to lose him. We sign up for 2 years and walk away empty handed without learning anything.

Alternatively, we go on a mixed run up to Easter, contract ticking away and we start sounding out other people for the year after. Word gets around, as it does in a small circle such as RL and the wheels fall off and crash and burn. A wasted season.

Or, we get an awful start, the crowd lose patience (if on the terraces) and we fall into panic mode. The team suffer, we sack the coach and appoint Joe Bloggs as an interim. The pressure is off, the team come out and win a few, the crowd hail the messiah and he gets a contract for 2 years, however when the novelty wears off it’s clear he’s not a good coach. Leaving us having to pay off 2 years, rather than one. [examples of this

The question should be, who is better and is he available. Same with Smith. We lost Smith without having THE MAN for the job. If the only man for the job is available now, get him.

Unless the verious vaccines can be rolled out much more quickly than anyone anticipates, then grounds will be on reduced capacity until at least the summer months. SL is talking about starting next season in March: it will probably, therefore, have to be a shortened season ending in September as RLWC2021 starts on 23rd October. I've also read (unconfirmed) that Sky wants £200,000 off the 2021 'bill' due to shortfall in matches broadcast in 2020. So the club almost certainly knows that gate receipts will be down whatever happens to Price, and money will be needed for Sky. In any case, I would be signing up for 2021 on the basis of seeing Greg Inglis play for wire, even if Alex Murphy were to be coach.

The issue is, we seem to have no concept of forward planning or contingency planning and this filters through every aspect of the club.

When TS left the appearance was of a hastily convened trip to Oz to interview a motley bunch of randoms and ended up with Price.
We have been short of at least one prop for several years and ended up with an unfit, unwanted Latu
We have never replaced Briers and the nearest we got was Sandow and we know how that ended

We should be planning and sounding out Price's replacement now, irrespective of whether he goes today or in a year. Recruitment for new players should also be underway - other clubs are already announcing new signings Covid finances notwithstanding.

As for the cost of sacking Price, well I'd have some sympathy if we hadn't wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on Akuola, Latu, J Clark, Inglis, that RU fella whose name I can't even remember and several others.

Well ,Old Father Time marches on & too much reliance on Cooper & Hill will mean one day we will have to start a game with props with little or no SL experience. Our youngsters need to be blooded asap .

This is spot on, how many times even in this season have we seen players being picked we already know are going to be leaving the club, this should of been the time we gave the youngsters a run out. We are not Wigan who always seem to give them a go.

I am not a big fan of Price but I do have a tiny bit of sympathy.
I am convinced he didn't recruit Burrell and I would even stick my neck out and say he didn't recruit Latu either.
The Greg inglis signing is another one for different reasons.
I Guess most coaches in RL would struggle to turn down the opportunity to sign GI I am not convinced that it is the best move for us.
Yes it creates headlines and under normal circumstances puts bums on seats and sponsorship but do we actually need a left centre/ full back. Maybe price agrred to GI straight away but I am it feels like the signing of GI was not thought through the same way that Saints, Leeds or Wigan would have considered that move.
As it happens if Widdop leaves he might slot in at HB on that left edge but that would be more by luck than judgement.

Price has made mistakes and I amazed that he was given a contract extension after year 1 and being beat by Catalan in the CC final but I do think he is working with his hands tied behind his back. I also think that there are some senior players at the club that go running to tell tales to the teacher if they don't like what is going on and they are the same that saw Smith leave the club.
The problem is the teacher should be saying "don't tell tales" and backing the coach.
Some of the players were here at the back end of the Tony Smith era so I think they also need to take a look at themselves because we all know they are capable of much more than the performance against Salford and Hull FC

Agreed, but remember the popular view on this forum at the time was that TS had reached the end of the road and anybody would be better than TS. I think Price has basically been as close to continuation of the later TS years as we could get. We didn't go backwards (which is an underestimated risk when changing coach) but we didn't go forwards. The pattern has been 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. So the idea that anybody would be better than TS was proven wrong, and just ditching Price now and playing coach roulette risks the same - or worse, hiring someone who takes us backwards.

I feel the same about Price now as I did about Cullen at the end of 2006. We know what we have got. We're likely to be around the same level as long as this goes on. We had a similar situation if I remember with Cullen going into a contract year in 2007 and I remember always having the feeling that the board liked Cullen and wanted to find an excuse to extend him - which they did when we had a bit of a good run - but that was a mistake, and even Cullen himself said on the Woody and Higham show that with hindsight he shouldn't have signed that extension. I don't think the board is as wedded to Price as it was to Cullen but there is a risk that if we jump to extend him after a few wins, we will just be where we were at the end of Cullen, going into a wilderness period where we can't move forward until we have the right appointment.

Although Lowes didn't work out as Cullen's replacement, the board was at least thinking ahead when it saw TS was going to be available after the 2008 world cup, and had him in mind as the long term replacement. I think the same approach is called for now. Find a guy who is really good - Wane, McDermott, one of the top Aussies - see when they are available. Rather than extend Price, give Anderson or Henderson a shot in the interim.

Paul Anderson did well in his previous head coaching job - he won the minor Premiership with Huddersfield - and was sacked prematurely as Huddersfield's fortunes afterwards showed. Imagine how we would feel if say Anderson went to Cas to replace Powell and had them back on top of the league like he did Hudds. We would be asking hard questions of the board saying how did we miss this guy on our doorstep.

So I would say take a long view - start lining up which of the real elite coaches is coming available in 2022, 2023, 2024 etc. Give Anderson a crack at Wire in the meantime. If Anderson takes us to GF winning level then we have our answer, if not, then pivot to the big gun down the line.

I've thought the same thing.

Imagine being on standby and being required to play.. then winning the big prize... would that feel right?

No