But Horne is the Academy Coach and should be spending his time with the Academy which is another reason why the club and maybe looked at JW to allow Horne to concentrate on his role in the Academy set up

Good to see you 2 have sorted the little blip out. Always good opinions from you 2.

Why is it if a team are rubbish its the coach if they do well its the players? Not sure of Websters record as a coach but I know he was unbeaten with us and went on a longish unbeaten run with Wakey when taking over, started the season well and then the inevitable collapse came due to small squad, lack of resources and injuries to key players. Pretty harsh to judge anyone on those terms. His big failing was his approach to the media and the interview where he seemed to throw the towel in.

That approach sounds pretty much exactly how we'd get several years of huge gulfs between performances with halfback consistency/availability problems.

There's a difference between getting a team well drilled and ready for your halfbacks to take control of, and essentially expecting the halfbacks to do the coaching for you. For an analogy, I'd think of the team as a car. The halfback is the driver, not the mechanic. They have input and take control, but it's not up to them to build and constantly maintain it.

I've just read it again in context and still think it's cobblers. In a well-coached side, all the halfback should need to do a lot of the time is tell the players which play he is running, and then they would all know where they need to be and what they should be doing from strong preparation (done by the coaches, not the halfbacks, in training). Maybe you worded it badly, but your post really reads as if for each play the halfback needs to hold a quick conflab on the pitch to let all the players know their places.

As opposed to needing the halfback to do the same?

I thought that was the type of rugby everybody hated when we did play it.

World class in the bar though !!