Why?

One of the two is clearly a much, much better coach than the other one. How can that fact be unrelated to an award like this?

FWIW, I'm not having a pop at you personally for this, but I'm sure this issue will come up - and, if so, it will flabbergast and infuriate me.

Because the success of the two teams this year is relative. In December, Noble had no team & no stadium. If he wins his game in hand, they are in the play offs. I personally think thats a remarkable achievement.

The fact that he under achieved at Wigan is clearly something you aren't prepared to overlook when considering who should win.

Ill repeat, imo Madge should win it. BUT Noble has done a superb job at Crusaders.



I know!! We've been quite pally since he left Madge should walk the award, but Noble is his closest contender, perhaps thats a better way to word my thoughts.

but taking a team like Crusaders who won 3 games the whole of last year and making them a competitive outfit challenging for a playoff spot in 12 months is a fantastic achievement, Noble should be considered for it

I do not care if Madge wins coach of the year. His legacy will be taking the game in the UK to a new level just like Monie did, that will be his greatest accolade.

He is a real deep thinker with the way he approaches the game, to the smallest detail, and has brought a new level of professionalism with him.

I imagine there's only one award that means anything to Madge - the SL title. If Lockers lifts the trophy at OT in October Madge won't give a monkeys if Noble wins coach of the year and neither will I!

I imagine that quite a few other people would get some satisfaction out of it. "Oh look, the coach who Wigan released for not being good enough, and now he wins Coach of the Year. How ironic. What on Earth were Wigan thinking?" It'll be small consolation for them if Wigan win the GF, but if they don't, these people will be hooting.

I think it will be a close call between Nobby and Madge. Lets not forget Noble came to Wigan and put all the building blocks into place Madge came in and just put the finishing touches to it. Noble went To Crusaders and cobbled together a team from nothing he has the got that team which were expected to be bottom again by a long way to within touching distance of the playoffs. He is doing at Crusaders what he did at Wigan building strong foundations for the club to kick on from.
Lets not forget the good work Noble did here at Wigan if it was not for him we would not have the training facility we have. And Do you honestly think if Madge had come to the club when Noble did he could have achieved so much in his first year?

By buying in a load of Aussies. Not what I'd call strong foundations.

Madge may not have done any better than Nobby did in 2006, but I'm confident he'd have moved us on in the 3 subsequent years, which Brian failed to do, and I also believe Trent would have stayed.

The whole academy system and training facilities were overhauled by Noble when he came to Wigan, something we should be very grateful for and for which we are now reaping the rewards.

As for coach of the years I suspect it will be between Maguire, Smith and Potter. Either of the last two could conceivably do the double (as could Bluey at Leeds)

The foundations are in the youth system he has put into place not the cobbled together team that are in SL. He is setting up a good youth system and is trying to get a new training facility set up. As Brain has said in another post its what he set up with the youth that is paying off for us now.

If Noble gets the award i sense this is a blatant attempt by the RFL to "butter him up " to keep him in the game.
There are a lot of old heads in the crusaders team who when upto speed and reasonably match fit could compete and pick off the odd win here and there and in some cases get lucky agaisnt the bigger teams.

Magurie has taken the same squad and turned it from mediocre to a very consistant outfit and has also blooded the young players also.

Bare also in mind that the Wigan team was Nobles squad and it speaks volumes how much more we could have gotten out of the players but also shows a "make do attitude" from Noble IMO

I'm not sure that being better than Millward qualfies you as Coach of the Year. I also have questions in my mind about Noble being responsible for our youth system. If he was, he certainly didn't make use of it. One of our problems while he was a coach was that older players always seemed to get picked first, which irritated the young ones and made the rest confident of selection whatever their form.

If Noble wins it this year, he will obviously be being judged on 2010 rather than his time at Wigan. But it would hardly be natural justice, given that the team he struggled to get a decent performance out of has hardly given a poor performance since he left.

Just what I was thinking.
Of course Noble has assembled a decent team at Crusaders. Most of the previous players at Bridgend had come up from Championship One and couldn't cope in Super League. This enabled Noble to sign many very good Aussies. They are still only ninth in the table despite this pedigree. They have lacked consistency, a characteristic of Wigan last season.
I think Maguire is nailed on with Smith a long long way behind. Depends on Wembley and the Grand Final for the runner up.