It is a long term project and yes we should continue with Smith, he hasn’t had enough time to A. Bring through the young players and B. Get the squad he wants.

As Ive said before I don’t like short term thinking in sport, I think if the club has brought in Smith with s long term plan in mind then they should stick to it.

Take Warrington last year, the easiest option to apease fans would have been to sack powell, the club stuck to his and their plan and I believe they will get the benefits. As we will with Smith.

Why do we need an Allardyce equivalent? Were not nearly in the same situation as Leeds Utd, nor will we be.

Talk about over reacting.

We get beaten up front in virtually every game , so how that is supposedly sorted i will never know

If smith had come in last season and taken them to the GF, and then they were tanking this season then yeah, I’d think something was up.

Context is different.

Disagree, were not getting beaten upfront IMO, it’s our execution that’s not working at the moment.

We had plenty opportunities to Win that game last night (we have in most games we’ve lost bar Warrington) but dumb plays and silly errors were our undoing.

We played better and got to a GF when smith didn’t have those things last season. He gets a pre season, begins to bring in his own players and we get worse.

These aren’t good signs of a project that has legs. At the moment, the more influence he has, the worse we get.

Relax Chris it was a joke.

Difficult to tell on here sometimesicon_wink.gif

That’s the thing about long term projects, they take time and aren’t always plain sailing.

Ask Warrington fans.

Fair point.
But I would argue that the dramatic improvement at Warrington is down to the massive investment in recruitment in the last off-season rather than the influence of Powell.
Powell also has proven pedigree in SL. He's not a novice.
Had they lost their first 3 or 4 games however, he would have been sacked. It's a fine line.

We have a lot of cap space being freed up for next year, we simply did not have the cap available to do that much this year recruitment wise.

You’re right Chris, there’s a lot of cap free at the end of this year if we choose to use it. The recruitment next off season will probably set the tone for the next 2-3 years due to contract length of those incoming. It’s important that we get it right, it’s the difference between doing another loop where we are currently and starting to move back up the table.

Definitely, then there are a lot of players OOC next year also. Off the top of my head Myler, Newman, Macdonald, Handley, Martin, Lisone, Olpherts, Sangare, and Mcdonnell from the top 20.

Does that make Kear Warnock?

Some people need to calm down a little, take a backwards step and look at the bigger picture.
Last night, despite the scoreboard, our defence was actually better than it has been. We were not as passive and had a LITTLE line speed. It was our completion rate that was our undoing, you can’t give away that much possession and expect anything. It must of been around 50% to the end of sets and heaven knows how many times we handed possession over on 1st and 2nd tackle and gave away 6 agains. I was worried from the moment I woke up and it was raining. Our execution was awful and seems that it always is in adverse conditions. It really is basic rugby to pass and catch!

But, again, we go back to it, I wish people would stop making these lazy comparisons. If you did a graph of Powell at Warrington, their performances are trending upwards as he's been able to bring his players in. At Leeds, Smith is trending downwards. His pre-season, his signings, are not making us better.

Here's what I think happens - we plod along this season, we might scrape into the playoffs, we might miss out. We don't do anything else. Smith get's another pre-season and more recruitment but we start poorly next season, and it persists, so it becomes clear that it's not working and we sack him. We're then looking for another coach, and talking about how it'll take them a good 2/3 seasons to sort the squad out and how it's a long-term project. It's a vicious cycle.

We've been doing this for 6/7 f*cking years.

It’s not a lazy comparison at all, it’s just an example of how when getting a new coach who needs to sort stuff out it takes time.

Daryl Powell has had two pre seasons and a hand in recruitment for last year and this.

We’re just going to have to agree to disagree, you want Smith sacked and another coaching merry go round after a year of him being here, fine, I think it’s the opposite of what we need to do.

Time will tell.

Yeah agree to disagree. If Smith needs more time, how come he made the Grand final last season, with no recruitment and no pre-season? That's the position I'm coming from.

He needs more time to do what he was brought in to do, irrespective of results good or bad.

Anyway, We might make the GF this season

It’s an impossible situation, the only way we will know how it will play out is by letting it. That could prove to be another coaching masterclass by trying to keep us fit and healthy in the first half of the season, but at the expense of some results, meaning we have more in the tank for the second half of the season. Or, it could mean we bumble through the year in dodgy (at best) form and leave the recruitment to a coach who doesn’t actually take us forward in terms of performance and results.

Until it happens the rest is conjecture.

Do you not realise by now that the magic formula involves many many variables? We are the best resourced and biggest fan based club in the league. We’ve been abysmal for the most part since 2017. We might eventually get it right, we might not. That’s sport….

I’m not sure we do.

The pack is having to do way too much heavy D because we’re not intense enough in defence away from our goal line, and our backs keep making errors.

We are able to get forward, things being equal, and that’s something we have not been able to do for years.

I think RS has this year and next unless something goes wrong behind the scenes or we get a real bad run of losses.

He has been prepared to drop players on form (Bentley, Leeming…).

I haven’t agreed with all his bench selections I have to say and a couple of the players he has brought in don’t look up to standard; but a couple do and like I said I want to see who we can bring in next season.

Play offs and challenging for trophies next season absolutely though, otherwise RS looks the weakest link.

Talk about lazy comparisons. Powell was responsible for recruiting Warringtons additions for 2022. How did that trend go? He had a lot of money to spend for 2023 and for now at least, things are trending upwards. Smith deserves the same chance. And while we are at it, if you are so desperate to be rid of Smith, who would you bring in?

Tell you what.
The table makes pretty depressing reading for Yorkshire.
Way behind Lancashire at the moment.