A good analogy would be when Derby County won the old Football League in the mid seventies under Dave MacKay after Brian Clough had been sacked under strange circumstances (it was always rumoured that the Derby board had effectively been ordered to fire Clough by the FL and FA) - it was Clough's team and tactics.

I can't understand all this vitriol directed at Brian Mac. Whether he is a great coach or not I don't know but what I do know is that he worked really hard down here, and he wanted the best for this club.

I agree his personality isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I spoke to him a lot over the years and he was always really great with me (I remember him coming to sit with us on the train back from a HKR game which I reckon a lot of people in his position wouldn't have done).

Brian also turned up at the Cumbria/England game to support the Purdham fund, which I thought was a credit to him (only other person of note I saw there was Stevo).

I guess the accessibility we have to our players and coaches can make things a bit tricky when you happen to have a dour Yorkshire personality. I doubt that Leeds fans get to talk to the Leeds coach (probably just as well, considering how their early season went!).

Anyway, I 'm very glad that BMac has had some success and I'm sure he will always support this club when he can.

Playing, in the words of Tracy Jordan, 'devils avocado here Larry' - isn't this to his credit? He inherited a team that many people thought was on its way down, with some of their own fans writing him off as well as some of the young players coming through. Yet they've made two major finals with a team he didn't really have much say in shaping. Who knows, he might privately think half of them are useless.

Whose side are you on here?!?

Neither. I don't feel one way or the other about Mac going to Leeds, I am satisfied that Powell gets another year to give SL coaching a go and I don't happen to believe McDermott would have done any better this season with the squad that we had.

well said ..................................Mate

You text me frequently during the season after a humiliating defeat that Powell has to go. Why the change of heart?

Powell inherited this turd of a squad that BMac built and the change in playing style was immediate. We actually tried to play football rather than just be the most dull team in the league - barring a John Kear coached side.

Problem was you could only do so much with the squad we had and we managed to avoid finishing last.

This is the year to judge Powell.

Based purely of conjecture, Leeds have succeeded in spite of the Mac. I'd heard the camp has been split from day one but they have reached the finals, without playing particularly well at any point because they are still a squad of capable professionals and because Superleague is terrible

I disagree with you, at Leeds he's managed to get a pretty good squad he inherited to start firing, part of that is injuries earlier in the season and part of that is him abandoning trying to be too clever and stick to established partnerships. The Leeds fans were on his back for mucking around with team selection, playing Burrow off the bench, switching Sinfield to standoff etc, when he actually started playing a more orthodox selection with 7. Burrow, 6. McGuire, 13. Sinfield, and 9. Buderus, they looked, not unsurprisingly, more like the side that won 3 championships in a row. Sometimes coaches tinker when they'd be better off focusing on what works well for a side, and I think that's McDermott.

We all know that McDermott had crap to work with at Quins but in my opinion some of our players went backwards under him, his sides often lacked balance (it became a running joke about how many second-row forwards we had when we were paper thin in other positions), and he liked to tinker when the limitations of the players meant trying to be too clever was only going to make things worse.

Well done Brian. I hope we give him a good reception when he comes back to our place in 2012.

We did the double over the SL Champions! Who would have predicted that !

Well done Brian. He tried his best with us but i just think that he's working with better players at Leeds

I am still not fully convinced Brian is a head coach, he has some really good players, Sinfield, Burrows and Danny McGuire are three talented backs and they really clicked yesterday.

He needs nowt from me, but I say Well done Brian.

Heard Gary Hetherington interviewed on Radio 5 half-alive today. He made the obvious, and to my mind inarguable, point that most fans are much too far away from the ins and outs of any club's coaching set-up and development to be in any real position to judge the effectiveness of a coach.

I'd sooner trust Hetherington's judgements on the game than those of any fan, including myself.

nah, mac is rubbish!! strewth i mean had he been any good, game would have been wrapped up by half time
No talent at all
its all down to the players nothing to do with him
So he could not get quins to do anything

We had a poor squad, no depth, lets just say well done mate, and stop having a go
I am wellpleased that he was the coach of the winning team!! A brit coach

loved the fact we did the double on em
and i got to see both games