Manager

Hi, it is difficult to give a definitive answer on who the better manager was between London Broncos managers simply because the assistant has become the manager a lot of times; thus there is not a true separation between eras, for instance

1 Brian McDermott and Rob Powell, with Tony Rea above them
2 Brian McDermott and Rob Powell, without Tony Rea above them
3 Rob Powell and associates such as Mick Howell
4 Tony Rea with a support team of Mike Eccles
5 Joey Grima with a support team of Andrew Henderson and Mike Eccles
6 Andrew Henderson with a support team of Danny Ward; Jamie Langley and Mike Eccles
7 Danny Ward with a support team of Jamie Langley and Mike Eccles, with Tom Tsang doing the reserves
8 Danny Ward with a support team of Tom Tsang and Mike Eccles
9 Tom Tsang and Mike Eccles
10 Jermaine Coleman with a support team of Jy-mel Coleman and Mike Eccles

I would argue that Andrew Henderson was much better at recruitment than Danny and managing within the budget.

One of the key differences at the club over the past 8 years or so was this:

Joey Grima brought through a host of players from the academy into the first team squad, on very competitive wages, of around 30k-40k, very decent for a young inexperienced player. These includes the likes of Joel Wicks, Harvey Burnett, Oscar Thomas and Toby Everett but it is thought the likes of Alex Walker and Matt Davis were thought not to be on this very competitive deal.

Andrew Henderson had difficulty in that he wanted to retain some players from the academy, who by that time might have played 30-50 games but he wanted to pay less than when they started, leading to a bit of an exodus, but he did manage to make very good signings in general, however the squad depth reduced visibly over his tenure. In some ways quite a lot of very good players were on bargain wages.

Danny Ward simply inherited the Henderson squad; his initial additions were of mixed quality - arguably none were an improvement on those from the Henderson days except for Pelissier. In the Super League season he bought well and brought in some very good players, but the longer he lasted the worse a deal he seemed to strike. He also brought through a host of players into the first team squad, but I am not sure the strike rate of quality was as high as could be justified. Danny didn't seem able to retain players, and some who seemed happy to stay were jettisoned such as Ioane and Hellewell which I think was a big error given who was retained or played in their position. I do not think he was perceived as getting value for money from either youth players or experienced in his last season, with a high list of unavailability.

I do not think Hendo would have accepted a situation where a player simply did not want to play on yet left him on the books, as I think Danny seemed to do.

What we don't know is how much influence that Hughes had on retention.

I have heard claims about current and past managers allegedly making remarks about how successful they would be, only to field a comparatively ordinary squad, but if they said what I was told, I would think they would be pushed into it. Like the "Quickly Kevin, will he score?" famous football conversation.

In my view the dream team of all the above combinations was Henderson with Langley and Ward