I cant hide the fact that I've never been a Potter fan but I'm getting really really fed up with the level of performances. We produce the odd top performance sandwiched with alot of inept lackluster ones.


Time to give KP a go for the rest of the season maybe?

I have voted no but im not 100% sure. I think it would be best to keep potter now as we wouldn't get anyone in for rest of the season and don't think much would change.

Even if we could get simmoms over now i'd much prefer him to take over pre season sos plans in place.

I agree on the getting someone new in , Purtill would get my vote for the rest of the season. I cant honestly see anything happening unless Leeds give us a pasting in the semi.

No.

Sure our last couple of performances have been poor, but we're 3rd in the league and in the Semi Final. Why destablise things at such an important part of the year? If we were on a severe nose dive ala Bradford, fair enough, but we're not.

The performances against Wigan and Leeds are enough to convince me that we can have a good end to the year, we just need a bit of luck with injury.

I agree we should stick with potter until end of the season.

With a bit of luck we will have wheeler, KC, eastmond and maurie all back soon.

Our run in is not as tough so we could get few players back and a bit of form for the play-offs.

agreed blobby owld lad...but we shouldnt be losing to teams like catalan and salford..(not to mention the points those 2 lowly teams put on us)..and i bet they struggle against wakefield next week.(yet another team thats playing bad)...also i dont like how they let a good lead slip instead of finishing them off, they end up struggling.

This is ridiculous. We're right in the hunt for the title - despite a crippling injury list - and you're asking him to fall on his sword or be fired.

The more I hear you spoiled children complain the more I hanker for a return to the days of Murphy. Not because I'm some twisted masochist but rather it might just teach some of you fools to value what you have.

Fickleness is a cancer which can take root within the support base and eat it away. What happens when the next coach arrives and we rack up a few defeats (which, given the levelling of the SL talent pool, will surely come)?

When the French revolutionaries made the bloodthirsty mob aware of its own power through the guillotine they literally and figuratively created an insatiable headless monster, which, at its height, threatened to destroy the country. A monster which took increasingly less to agitate - to the point where a person need only LOOK guilty and he was separated from his head.

The metaphor works equally well here. If McManus plays Pontius Pilate and sacrifices Potter to the mob right here tomorrow his successor will discover his failures are tolerated less. And so-on and so-on for those coaches that follow - until a chairman with balls says no.

The same happened at Wigan when they hit the skids and started cutting coaches. It didn't take long before they were petitioning for dismissal within six months of a new coach's arrival!

I voted YES.
I was thinking this week (bit premature) I don't want him to lead us out at Wembley if we get there or Manchester ground FC.
Can't stick the guy, we've had more injuries since he's been here (yes, I'm blaming his training, lads need more rest), lost to poor teams on a regular basis, & the rugby has been poor for 2 seasons.
We've got more than enough experience in KP & KC, with Wello, Jammer, Roby who've all been there & done it to guide us through rest of season..
Go help Dulls they need you more than we do!

What a load of waffle. I'm not sure how many times people need to say this but it goes beyond the mere fact were luckily in 3rd place in the league. Our performances over the whole of Potter's tenure have been on the whole p!ss poor. Harking back years and years is pointless , I remember the Murphy years and I remember how garbage we could be but that doesnt make Potter any better.

Firing off Potter now might not be the best thing to do given the circumstances but it's a talking point and after the crap served up for the majority of the last season and half we are certainly not fickle for discussing it.

Because I have an opinion that you dont agree with ? It's called discussion and debate not that i think your capable of that.

Great argument btw

Potter is not the problem here. Alot of people are claiming Potter isn't able to to motivate the players and is a poor man manager, how people can claim this without being at training or in the dressing room I don't know, but that is beside the point, but at the end of the day once the players cross the whitewash it is their responsibility to do what matters in the 80 mins of football that follows.

If tactics are the issue then perhaps Potter is partly to blame but in terms of attack we are much improved on last season points wise. If coaching is to blame then whats to say that Purtill will be able to turn anything around were MP to go now?

We look tired and sloppy in defence, what we lack is form & consistency i'm not sure a change of coach will do anything in that respect at the moment.

It summed up your post entirely and required no further elaboration.

All good points, I agree that on the whole we've looked better this year but we still seem to look disjointed to me far too often and we seem to be lacking in idea's at times.

I personally think he should. We aren't good enough to win anything this year, even with a full strength side, which we've not had all year. So I don't see what good it's doing keeping Mick.

If anything, his departure might fire a few of them up.

We've beaten our 3 major rivals this season, so clearly we are good enough.

Getting rid now would be stupid, as blobby said, we are 3rd in the league and in a cup semi, we have NOT lost 8 (now 9) in a row. The issue I have with coaching at saints is the sheer number of injuries, for 2 seasons running, something isn't right there

As I've said countless times - Potter is a more conservative coach than Millward - but the latter could rely on a) a host of world class backs who specialised in exciting play, b) a weaker competition in which all the best players were controlled by a few teams and c) near uniformly shoddy opposing coaches.

The Potter critics pass these points off as inconsequential or fail to recognise their validity entirely. Either way is completely unreasonable and wholly biased.

I mean, wake up and take a lungful of reality! You CAN'T play Harlem Globetrotters rugby with phucking Dean and Flannery or a half-crocked Wheeler as a centre partnership. Especially when your opponents are coming at you with quality players.

And in any case - it's not like we haven't played good rugby under Potter.

I challenge [uANYONE[/u to define the term "good rugby" and then claim - with a straight face - that Saints fail to qualify on the strength of our recent performances at Leeds and Wigan.



I'm sure many fans of clubs below us in the table and/or who've been on the wrong end of a Saints thrashing will wholeheartedly disagree.

The problem with the Potter critics is they are totally incapable of coming up with an argument for his sacking which is based on solid, joined-up thinking with no element of bias. What reasoning takes place is packed full of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_biascognitive biases[/url and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biasesmemory distortions[/url and the resulting argument takes little prodding before it becomes self-contradictory.

I'm certain most of the Potter critics KNOW their reasoning is bogus but use it as a smokescreen to hide the truth that they are, in fact, (as George Orwell once said) [i"Trumping up a set of rules to justify an instinctive [dislike"[/i.

You state categorically that Potter is not the problem but then say those who claim it is can't prove it because they aren't at training, etc. Nor are you! So you can no more prove that the problem is not Potter than the likes of me can prove it is!

However, you seem to be very willing to blame the situation entirely on the players. If we were top of the league by 10 points and playing champagne rugby every week, would it be the players or the coach who were responsible for that?

We can see quite clearly the impact Tony Smith has had upon Warrington and Maguire upon Wigan. However, you and some other people for some reason refuse to acknowledge that just as a coach can have a positive impact upon a team, he can also have a negative impact.

We are indeed good enough. But we are not playing well enough.

I apologise i missed off an "IMO" at the beginning.



If we were top of the league by 10 points I'd be glad to say its most likely due to a combination of several things coming together, rather than it just being the 'fault' of one thing or another. We as humans are all too ready to attempt to blame things that go wrong on one thing, whether thats us being late for work due to missing a bus or getting stuck in traffic, or losing a grand final due to a dodgy reffing decision or a missed catch.

FWIW i've never refused to believe or acknowledge that a coach can have a negative impact on a team's performance and tbh I think you'd be hard pushed to find a number of the people who also disagree with the 'blame Potter' brigade, who wouldn't acknowledge it either. I'm just not naive enough to believe he is the only reason.

As you say its clear to see that the respective Wigan & Warrington coaches have had an impact on their clubs but is this solely down to them? Do those coaches have some kind of mind control over their players and [umake[/u their teams play well? Coaches can only do so much, as I say for the 80 minutes on the pitch a coach can't stop a player from knocking-on, kicking out on the full, catch every bomb, not step in touch, stop every offload or not pass forward.

Actually, I think so yes. Both teams are largely the same as last season and the season before. Yet the attitudes of the players when on the pitch couldn't be more different. Warrington in particular are like a team reborn - they actually hit their potential in matches now. I really enjoy watching them. I think the impact of a coach cannot be underestimated and both Wire and the Pies are classic examples of that.


Nope, but they sure can motivate them and give them everything they need to perform to the best of their abilities on the pitch.


Undoubtedly. Most of our players need to go back to rugby league school and learn again how to catch, pass and tackle as the standard of our core skills has fallen through to the basement. And I've been quite open on here in expressing my feelings about that. But our team still consists mostly of players who were around in 2008 and there is a marked difference in attitude and skills to then so I can't believe that our miserable performances (with a handful of exceptions) are solely down to the players.

A resounding NO, KP is part of a rubbish setup at Saints that Potter has had to contend with, too many putting their noses in the trough (Scully, great player, now Interferance Officer) The team is no were near fit enough, leaking points like BP in the Gulf.
The new Coach needs a clearout when he is appointed, hopefully he will bring his own staff with him.
The way Arnolds injury was dealt with during his last match was disgraceful, showing a real lack of expertise and knowledge on how to deal with the situation.
BIG clearout needed ASAP.

100% no, I am still convinced we can win at least one trophy this season.