LOL. I might even give you the coaching thing. You clearly have a good rep from how people talk about you....... But Carter leaving would mean you had no team to coach pretty quickly.

The voice of reason

Egg Banjo wrote:
If I performed as poorly at work as Chester and the players are, I'd be embarrassed at myself and my boss would be having a word with me.

I expected us to lose, and I expected us to be nilled, but that's because I can see that Chester has completely lost it and the players aren't interested in working for him or themselves any more


Just out of interest what is your job?

He’s a professional moaner, and a very good one. Comes out of the woodwork whenever the club has a bad patch, has no perception of support and loyalty. In other words, “a waste of spacel”

Yeah, notice there was no reply...because it’s the biggest load of rubbish argument going is that...if I did the same in my job I’d get sacked...what a load of nonsense!

It’s ok for anyone in any different job to go and do their job when everything is good and all your tools are in tact, you can go and do the job well.

Just say as an example you work in a warehouse...

You’ve a team of 20 workers and you have 5,000 orders to complete on shift.

First three days of the week all is good and you hit your targets.

4th day...4 people ring in sick, two of the four fork lift trucks that have been fine for the first three days stop working so you can only use two...you’re already 4 people down and an hour into the shift there’s an accident and one of the workers has to be taken to hospital, so you’re another two staff down.

Next thing there’s a problem with the computers and orders aren’t coming off like they should be...

Boss calls you in at the end of the shift...right you’ve only managed 2.500 orders this shift you’re sacked...

Lol we're are our 8 Super League backs meaning backs who can come in and old a place down .I will tell you 2 rest have been brought in as panic buys.Fact H K R ad load of injury as lock down started yesterday they had near enough a full team out ,played better rugby than we can.Says a lot about there coaching and conditioner. Think 4 wins,or is it 5 in 27 games and blaming injury is a poor excuse for panic buying of past it S L player's .No point in blaming Mr Carter he as saved the club but is been taken in by poor coaches with plenty of excuses

Injuries are an exact excuse. I can't see how you can say otherwise.
If we don't have our best players on the field we won't do as well as if they were.

Yes but previous to that Hull KR lost 40-10 to Warrington at a neutral ground...you bigging them up for that too?

I wouldn't say its Chester out as of yet, we are clearly doing it tough at the moment with some key personnel missing. Yesterday our so called first choice 1,2,3,4,5,7,8 were missing which is going to affect any team.

Yes our confidence is clearly low and we are lacking some leadership on the field which makes the Fifita issue all the more frustrating.

Once we are back to full strength, I'll pass judgement again and if we are in the same position then it might be the time to look at the management

We beat Warrington before lockdown

They didn't have Hill or Hughes but had BMM.
Certainly they were near full strength in both games with their marquee players in place.

We had Johnstone, Arundal, Lyne, Kopczak, Tangata playing
And we were at home.

Chester was there in both games.

So why the change in fortune? Could it be Covid, injuries fitness? Or could it be Chester just became a bad coach and should be sacked?

Hull KR are probably a good side to compare against because their results aren’t too dissimilar to outs over the same period.

They have the odd good wins...the close defeats against top sides mixed in with the odd hammerings. In that time frame we’ve played them twice...comprehensively beating them 38–10 on their own patch in a huge pressure game at the back end of last season and losing first game of this season at theirs.

What we saying about their coach then?

Went to Leeds and won them their first title in over 30 years.

Went to Warrington and gave them their first final victory in over 40 years.

Won grand finals, challenge cups, world club challenges, been coach of the year, coached Great Britain.

Has he all of a sudden become a useless coach, or like Chester, is he finding it difficult to get results with limited resources and continually up against it with injuries?

I agree

How many games have we played and of those how many have we won since Kear left.
With regards Chester he is still not taking any blame instead passing that onto one player who I remember played when clearly injured last season to help the team. I note he was enthusiastic in stating that he is our highest paid player so is it once again down to money and cost cutting. The biggest loss however to revenue will be those supporters either staying away or not renewing their season tickets because of what a team he coaches has produced for many months on the pitch. This will then be followed by the usual it’s the supporters fault that we cannot have a competitive team despite the fact we have provided the club with a bonus by not requesting our money back. I am afraid this threat will not wash this time because people will have greater calls on their finances caused by the effects on employment by the virus than watching a poor performing team.
It will therefore be up to the CEO or the coach to realise it is a time for a change regardless of friendship because Wakefield Trinity is bigger than one individual and hopefully will outlast all of us.
With regards the Hull KR comparison, they realised he had taken the team as far as he could and sacked him, we on the other hand have not. We are not talking just this season but since the Leeds away win last season. I am sorry but based on the teams attitude and performance levels he is clearly no longer up to the job and no I don’t know who to replace him with but that will depend on who wants it.

The Hull KR comparison I’m making is with current coach Tony Smith! Over the last 25-30 games both teams results are pretty similar. Is Tony Smith a useless coach all of a sudden or finding it hard on limited resources and continuos injury struggles. To a lesser extent you can throw Brian MacDermott in there...won everything with a champion side of players at Leeds but couldn’t win a game with Toronto and suffered a 66-12 defeat in his last match...

If there were to be a replacement, I'd go for a proven coach at a lower level than an unproven one from the top, in the way that Cas got Powell from Featherstone.

Ford or Ward (with Langley) would be the ones. Ward prizes fitness, and appears to prize team-togetherness. Sheridan would be too much of a risk, just because some people are meant to be assistants, not coaches (see Webster and Lowes) and it shouldn't be for us to conduct the experiment.

For me, it would be JD. He's proved at it at the lower level in Aus, has bags of NRL assistant experience and knows the club, but I just don't think we'd get him. A family man with kids who is being groomed to slot into Wayne Bennett's job. He doesn't need to come here to get the head coach NRL gig. He just needs to bide his time.

I haven't done the maths but I reckon if someone sat down and worked it out, he would have one of the worst win-ratios for Leeds in the super league era. He won some of his grand finals from lower down the league. He was very good at a short run at the end of the season, but Leeds had a history of starting badly under him but then coming good at the end of the season. My reading of his Leeds side is that he benefited greatly from a golden generation and strong leadership within the playing group rather than astute coaching.

Ward & Langley would be my choice as well. Either way we need a change, Chester has done a decent job but coaches have a shelf life and sadly the decline is deep set. A total refresh of the backroom staff is needed as well. Dickens, Clawson, Gilmour etc have been there years and we need a change of direction.

As for JD he is taking over from Bennett in 2022. The contract is in place, was announced earlier this year.

I remember a mention of something along those lines during commentary on one of the games but I didn't know it was all official and signed off.

I bet he pinches himself when he thinks back to walking into Belle Vue for the first time after an unsuccessful stint at an unsuccessful Widnes, compared to where he has ascended to, past all those great NRL players who have retired since then. Good luck to the guy. Just a shame that it is unlikely we'll ever see him coaching Wakey.

What I liked about Ward was how fit the London players looked. I know they weren't coming from a bruising Super League campaign but fitness was clearly an issue for them, and why they were able to stay in the games right to the end. Teams like ours cannot carry players who begin huffing and puffing after twenty minutes, because we are always likely to be doing a lot of defending and because to have a chance, we have to play above ourselves.

I imagine if you can stump up the cash to pay off Chester and his coaching staff, and then pay for a new Head Coach and coaching staff, MC will oblige. You do realise the world had stopped for four months, and we are now in a recession?

So we were unfit and London were fit yet at the end of the season their points difference was -282 and ours -115...

This is what makes me laugh about our fans. Supposed to be ‘supporting’ our club but rip us to shreds at every available opportunity, yet heap praise on the teams in and around us who are getting similar results!

Case in point...praise for Hull KR trying the other day but forgetting in their previous game they lost 40-10 to the same Warrington team we did.

We lose our first game back by a point to Wigan who are now sat top but instead of praising a gutsy effort let’s pick apart the performance and say Wigan eased off to let us get back into it...and it goes down as another defeat to add to the numbers...

I agree. Some people just seem to live for the moaning and don't actually post anything when something good happens.
I guess if they pay their money they can do what they like but it seems like a sad existence to me.

Saying that my mate is a Cas fan and says they have exactly the same issue. Maybe all clubs have them.

I was only ever talking hypothetically, on the basis that if someone else "were" to come in. I don't think I've ever posted a "Chester Out" post, and for me this season doesn't matter, other than getting some cash in the bank. I have said a lot in the past that if you can't be the best, be the fittest, something London brought. They were clearly very fit, which gave them a chance. What caused them to go down with a big points difference is that they were fundamentally a Championship side who played above themselves.

We have battled against injuries for two or three seasons now, and I imagine that fitness must be a factor, as you must come off worse in a challenge if you are more gassed than the other bloke.

My starting point for us, however, is that with the lowest budget in the league, any top half finish is a good season. We have to utilise every aspect to achieve that, and being fit is part of that, which is clearly what London realised. As it happened, it wasn't enough, but it very nearly was.

Yes they’re suffering too and have returned 3 losses since the restart, same as us! A gutsy effort against Wigan with a fair few injuries, a few 50/50 decisions against them and disruption through the game with injuries...a good effort at Saints but registered a 0 in the points column, and after going 14-0 up shipped 40 unanswered points against Catalans...

I still don’t see any side being able to do much with 8 backs out pregame and losing a further 2 during the game, which ultimately leads to all four 3/4 made up of players playing out of position. Up against a team with a spine of Ratchford, Austin, Widdop and Clarke is the scoreline that surprising?

The ones that are hurting us at the moment are in the backs though...which of the current injured backs would you say picked up their injuries through lack of fitness?

Or do you put it down to bad luck...to add to being without 4 more players stood down for other reasons completely out of the coaches hands..

Just for PT our shirts look nice but unfortunately that is the only positive I can think of. With regards sacking Chester it is not the money which is the major factor but his friendship with the CEO, so no it will not happen. The only way he will go is if he resigns and looking at his lack of responsibility that is very unlikely.
I am not sure we have the lowest budget that may belong to Salford but I expect we should receive a bonus from SL by playing and moving our games around just to keep Sky happy.
With regards the four players who had to stand down, this was a decision taken by the club and coach to play when we could have postponed like all the rest have, so yes he knew the risk he was taking with regards the outcome and therefore cannot use it as an excuse.
We were bad before lockdown but whatever happened during this period has not helped in generating any team spirit when we returned unlike all the other teams. I don’t know why and anything I think would be pure speculation just as I am sure everyone on this forum will have their own.

I don't think fitness in the backs is necessarily an issue. Our spine yesterday is the one most people are calling for, but the backs we have are not able to do a job because they are never in a position to because the pack isn't strong enough.

In some respects, bad luck plays a part, but when the same clubs suffer the same bad luck, there is perhaps another cause. Hull FC promise every year but always seem to be club that has wretched luck with injuries. Ours too.

It could be technique. It could be fitness, so players are straining more than they need to do, or doing more tackling than other clubs. When Chester first arrived, he recognised that our pack was too light and took steps to address it, and we had a couple of good seasons. A lot of the players are older and a little more battered than before. It maybe just needs a refresh in the pack. Westerman should be an eighty-minute player, for example, but he isn't fit enough, but we need him to be.

Catalans have turned back into the team they were a couple of years ago because they have a pack that is big and strong, and a couple of players in the backs who are effective when given the chance. We have the backs but perhaps not the pack anymore. Write this season off and prepare for next. Refresh the pack and I reckon we'll go well again.