Anthony Griffin was the incumbent Brisbane Broncos coach when he was shafted by the club when they brought Wayne Bennett back to the club

Not sure if that's the same bloke. This guy was being raved about by Phil Clarke in a piece on the Sky Website. They had him responsible for producing a number of promising players through the Knights u20's team.

Garth Brennan, assistant at Penrith (to Anthony Griffin).

It's nice to speculate but let's be honest. Wane aint going anywhere

Also, why are we not allowed banter on Cherry and White anymore? Every slightly anti-Wigan post get's deleted. It's getting boring but the mods allow to$$er posts from Pacific etc. You wonder why people are going to wiganwarriorsfans. That's where i am headed. Over and out.

Well done mods

That's the man. I did have Penrith popping in my head but couldn't quite remember the details of Clarkes article.

If Wigan ever did decide to go in a different direction I'd expect he'd be the type of coach they'd look at. His rep seams similar to that which Maguire had all those years back.

Not too difficult to fall foul of the mods there either....

Surely if the opportunity to sign a recent NRL GF winning coach was presented we'd have to seriously consider making an appointment.
I think it would be an oversight to think Madge hasn't developed his coaching further since his stint in the NRL.
I'm also sure he'd still have lots to offer our club, many of which would be once again refreshing and new.

He and Souths are going through a bad time currently, but that suddenly doesn't make him a bad coach.
If I remember rightly Wayne Bennett was having a bad time at Newcastle Knights, Broncos still appointed him knowing he's not suddenly lost it.

If available; has to be considered.

The most interesting effect of Michael Maguire for me was the complete transformation in attitude at the club.

We went overnight from being a bunch of half-assed underachievers, whom Brian Noble coached on a kind of 9-5 basis, to being easily the best team in the competition. And all that with minimal change-around in terms of playing personnel.

Maguire wasn't the kind of coach who went home at teatime. For him, 'getting along' and 'making do' were never good enough. It was all about 100% effort and total concentration on winning. And if the tactics by which this was achieved made for a boring spectacle, so be it - in any case, I've always said there's nothing actually quite as boring as losing every important game you play (whereas Madge won most of his).

At present, the Wigan team is crammed with people who are woefully short on disciplilne (like Lockers, Farrell and Joel), who lack some key skills (like Sarginson and, I'm sorry to say, Matty) or who phone in their performances when they can be bothered (like Mossop and Crosby). Madge, who is a harsh disciplinarian, would sort much of that out, either by bollocking the offenders until they got their act together or by dropping them.

It may be that he hasn't been a roaring success in Australia because all these aspects of coaching are already widely employed in the NRL. But they certainly aren't here.

I'd re-employ Michael Maguire in a heartbeat. It only took him one close season to find an iron core in our team which made it look as if we were about to embark on a new age of conquest. Given the current low standards in SL, I'd be amazed if he couldn't do something similar again.

It was the small things that we did so well under Maguire that we miss. Our kick chase was better, our line speed was better, our passing accuracy was better and so on. I used to like how he got the full team to run from anywhere they may be stood on the pitch to celebrate a try with the try scorer. Our general discipline was better. We got pinned for penalties don't get me wrong but we didn't see the petulant push and shove stuff that we do now.

Wane has always spoke about wanting t do things better then Maguire but you can't fix what ain't broke.

I watched the Rabbitohs again last night; they really are having a woeful season: even sides that can't otherwise buy a win are filling their boots against them. The sacrifices made to get Sam Burgess back already look to have been not worth it. I have a bad feeling that for both Sams, their best days are behind them. They seem wedded to a dull, knock-em-over style of play ( sound familiar?) and if they come across a side who are bigger bullies than they are (Bulldogs), they have no answers, and likewise if they come across a team with a bit of guile in attack (Wests).

Maguire seems to be struggling to overcome this, at least with the roster he has available.

All that said, it doesn't take away from the points made by Cruncher and NK in their posts up-thread, which I can't disagree with.

In Monies first spell they had a huge advantage of being the frist real professional club , pretty much signed any player with any ability and sometimes stuck them on the bench helping Wigan and reducing the quality of the opposition, I dont think many coaches would have failed at wigan in that era, Maquire on the other hand took a seriously poor wigan team and turned them in to champions whilst having the same restrictions of any other club. I cant see any reason why he couldnt repeat that.

Bottom line is I think Wane is too close to the players, and his culture/mindset doesn't help the cause? Dominate the oppo by any means, but you've got to know where the line is and stay the right side of it. Do we think that the same players would be giving the same penalties away every game under Madge?
Madge came and didn't worry about upsetting anyone.He also got the whole team working harder than i'd seen in years.
Andrew Johns said something in commentary once about it's not just the players with the ball in their hands who need to work hard, it's more about the players who don't have the ball and how hard they are/aren't working, i.e. ball-runners, dummy-runners. Under Madge, we were so driven and had so many runners in motion, the oppo defence was always on the back foot. Now we don't run hard enough or from deep enough imo.

I sometimes used to struggle to keep up with all the players we had in motion under Maguire. We often seemed to have runners all over the field and the opposition could rarely keep up. Compare that to how we play now and its quite depressing