maybe not, but there'd be a wider pool (& just think how many dummies would have been spit out if it could ever have been a GB & Ireland squad with Pat playing for it

^This.

McNamara made bad decisions from the beginning. I think with the right decisions throughout the tournament, we'd have made the final. And had we played NZ in the final, avoiding Australia; or had we faced a battered Australia in the final, who knows. We were clear 3rd favourites regardless of who was in charge. But McNamara was not the right man for the job, in my opinion.

Been appointed assistant coach at the Roosters full story in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Didn't rate him at all.
Now he's gone, good luck to him.

The first thing he will do at the Roosters is recommend that they go all out to sign Kevin Sinfield.

Not great news, and I am little shocked along with plenty of other Roosters fans. Never mind, we have a great coaching set up (except him) and a great playing line up, so not worried one abit about 2014. He might do well as an assistant.

This is the thing. Some people are better suited and make excellent assistant or specialist skills/conditioning coaches.

Good luck to him.

I think he would be better suited to being someone who gets things put in place. Once you go past the team and delve deeper, he set up training camps, shown a pathway for the England Knights to the full team, kept in contact with the oz based lads, unearthed Widdop (how many people honestly knew about him prior to his first call up?). These were just a few off the top of my head and I'm sure there will be plenty more which will probably go unnoticed.

I remember him doing a TV interview not long after he got the job. I thought he sounded more like a business man than a coach.

You can argue that he chose the wrong pair but you cant argue that selecting a half back pairing and sticking with it. Instead of chopping and changing it every couple of months and unsettling a team.

Good luck to him in the future. But thankfully he wont be near selecting the England team in the near future!

I think he did a decent job to be honest. People slated his appointment which is fair enough because he hadn't really achieved enough to warrant the job but many then steadfastly refused to acknowledge any good he did from then onwards. We did better than most expected, there's no shame in being 2 points away from beating the kiwis and 8 points away from beating the aussies. If he really did get everything wrong like many said we would have been hammered in both games like most people predicted before the cup started. People set their expectations, he exceeded them, so people changed their expectations so that they could still deem him a failure.

Hang on a minute. So it's SM's fault Graham and the others went out boozing is it? I noticed that when Graham came back into the team he could do no wrong. If anything i'd blame Graham Hock et al for us not making it through to the final. I'not SM's biggest fan by any means, but to say he should have just let it slide is ridiculous...

I blame Sinfield for shooting out of the line and allowing Johnson to score

What were the expectations he exceeded exactly? He was in charge for 3 years and got one win from 7 against the other 2 elite nations. The minimum requirement for the WC was to reach the final IMO, and regardless of how close he came, he failed. His time in charge was littered with odd squad and team selections and the way he handled the media during the WC was nothing short of embarrassing.

You get my point though...