Quote: BP1 "Genuine question to you.
How do you know that the relatively successful season you are having isn't down to the fact that Willie Peters has been able to build on some solid foundations which were put down by Tony Smith?
Now it may well be that Peters has come into your club and told everyone 'forget everything you have been doing these past three years, this is the only way forward from here on in', but I have my doubts that is the case here!
The fact that the likes of McGuire and Hodgson worked under both regimes suggests a certain amount of continuity at rovers. Your club was on a fast track to nowhere before Smith took up the post, he clearly improved matters to some degree as evidenced by the fact that he took you to within 80 minutes of both major cup finals (a fact I've noticed you are reticent to acknowledge, presumably because it doesn't fit your current narrative!).
Unless you work at rovers on a day to day basis, you have no real idea of how much of this season is down to either Peters being a completely new broom, or (more likely) the fact that he inherited at least a solid ground, from which he has been able to implement his own ideas without the need to do the groundwork which tends to be required at any club rebuild.
Tony Smith has, unfortunately, inherited another Hull club which requires rebuilding from the ground up. Whether he is successful here remains to be seen, but your dismissal of any work he did whilst in rovers employment is at best disingenuous, or at worst playing blind with facts.
Peters has undoubtedly done well this season, but I repeat, you don't know (or have chosen to ignore) what the situation at your club was like when he first walked through the door, you were hardly a basket case, which was quite possibly the situation when TS took up the offer to coach there.
Like I first said, this is a genuine serious question to you, I'm not baiting or looking to score cheap points over you. As a black & white I am hardly in a strong position at the moment to play those kind of cat and mouse games, am I!!!'"
11th.11th, 6th (part season) 10th at time of sacking. Maybe Peter's 5th possibly 4th would have been achieved anyway but I really don't think so.
Tony Smith signed expensive overseas flops like Takairangi, Vete and Sims. He signed players who were just not Super League standard at all like Trout, Maher and Rawsthorne.
And we could defend no better on the day of his departure than the day of his arrival..
But we went off Smith for more than that.
He would stop speaking to people after a disagreement even the club CEO and his assistant coach who happens to be one of the most respected figures in the history of Super League. He said he worked for the players not the club.
Tony Smith is a complex character with a massive ego.
