Continuing the theme do the fans need to take some responsibility?

After all we have legion "Stripey Nigels" singing Der Der Der Ser, slurping down their two pinters resplendent in their 8XL replicas clapping the players off after another defeat and still following in decent numbers. Like the lemmings on Facebook who still post "Hard luck Wire" after a right royal reaming by Huddersfield when luck has nothing to do with it. They accept the dog served up each week and still they come back asking for more hoping for a different flavour. They also have a very small imagination as they cannot think past Smith as coach. Worst still they have a go at anyone who thinks "hang on, this is crap, we should be better than this".

Maybe if they were a little more demanding of the club's custodians we would get a winning culture at the club as we would not tolerate this garbage we have had to see this season. Saints fans got rid of Cunningham.

Instead we have got a club the Nigels deserve. A laughing stock.

I agree. Fans play a huge part in setting the culture at a club and a LOT of ours are content to have us as plucky also rans with no real right to be up there challenging the big boys. I include some close friends in that bracket and most of it is based on the preceding 30 years. 'We've been rubbish for ages so be thankful' kind of attitude. We used to be called the man city of rugby league and the comparison still stands as despite their league titles if i was a city fan id be expecting even more with what's at their disposal. Ps city have done better than us, we're laughable.

yep defo the fans fault and not the likes of brown hughes sims russell slug lineham dwyer cooper hill and anyone else thats giving there all week in week out..as a punishment we should be frog marched to the halliwell jones to buy a season ticket for next season..yours faithfully nigel

City signed up the widely trumpeted "best coach in the world" last season and won bugger all. Admittedly, they weren't as crap as Wire have been, but just saying anyway



I'm firmly in the Smith Out camp in any case

An English coach would have been booted out long before we got to this stage ,Cullen & Lowes for instance. There seems to be an attitude around our Mr Smith that says "because he is a Aussie he must be good."

What I dont get is when we were historically rubbish and then Peter Deakin came in and things looked positive off the pitch, fans demanded more on the pitch. When we got trounced by a rubbish Huddersfield the fans had a sit in.

when we got beat by a rubbish Huddersfield this year fans simply said ahhh But we couldnt handle Danny Brough...he's still quality.

Danny Brough ......!!! he's 6 months younger than Gidley..........

I'd have broke the bank for Danny Brough 6 years ago as it was obvious Lee Briers was coming to an end.

However TS went public and criticised Brough for speaking out against McBanana(England coach abroad!)...so that basically put that to bed.
Still Danny Brough needs a quality front row to shine...hence patchy form at Hudds, and we don't have that at Wire at present, so Brough would likely end up as another poor signing.

The trouble is that the club, the coaches, the players and a number of fans have sat back "fat, dumb and happy" at recent successes.

The reality is that we have been sliding down since 2012 (our last success), TS has not recruited well and chosen a very poor second man. The level of players arriving has steadily got worse as the seasons tick by with no one on the board seemingly putting their foot down, instead the club blindly back TS and his requirements.

The fans have every right to question this down turn, in the past I have witnessed very vigorous protests by fans at the way seasons turn out. We are now at the result of the "taking part counts more than winning" era, people now put up with rubbish.

If we demand success and not put up with trash players and/or losing finals in the way we have things will change for the better.

Ive been watching Wire since 1970, so im pretty qualified to remember the crap. My thoughts about today's fans is i think a lot only started following once we started to get success so dont know any better, maybe im way off but thats how i see it and thats why i think they are not annoyed as some of the old brigade. Im peed off because i remember the dark days and so i cant except where we are now given how the club is a lot better off than the bad old days.

The old adage is, the Wire fan is happy if the team is seen to be giving 100% effort. Now, I would certainly not stand infront of any player and say "you are not trying", but at same time, the rugby is uninspiring and lacking direction or a plan most of the time. This isn't what the Wire fans want, nor deserve.

Plenty of teams have got blown away by likes of the Tigers this year or us 5 years ago, but a season is a long time in any sport, and changes are needed. We seem to be rudderless, at the top and the bottom.

They are symptoms of the issue, not the cause. If you sign players that are of inferior quality to the other clubs don't be surprised when you find yourself lower in the league than them.

I think this is a genuinely interesting debate to be had.

However I've not yet seen anything on here that gives a credible argument for us fans taking part of the blame. Saying we need to be more demanding is a wishy-washy statement worthy of a Tony Smith press conference. Also, Does Smith sit in his office and think "I need to change something here", but then checks Facebook, and sees the "lemmings" posting positives after we lose, then says "Ah, no the fans have my back". Of course not.

So in all seriousness, what would people say, specifically, is the role or job of the fans?

And therefore, as this season has been a disaster, what have we been doing wrong within that role that has contributed to where we now are?

I'm struggling to see what this post offers beyond that of the OP, which in itself was a question.

Clearly someone is giving the wrong impression if Hill thinks 95% of the fans are behind Smith and Agar.

Yes, the OP was a question, but the responses to that question from those that feel there is a responsibility from the fans haven't really given any solid reasoning. The answers so far have been about about fan apathy/being content/stripey Nigels/glory hunters etc, and seem to be more about having a pop at sections of our fanbase, rather than actually answering the OP. The answers so far have not actually addressed the question of "how are we responsible"?

So I was merely asking a clear and concise question to those, in the hope of seeing some actual reasoning as to why they think the fans have a level of responsibility for our current woes, rather than having more pointless answers along the lines of "I've supported the wire since 1875, one year before they were even formed, when I used to sneak into the games after digging the Manchester ship canal, and the problem with our fans today is that ruddy drummer"

Apart from the hard core fans who turn up week in week out because they have wasted money on season tickets, the walk up supporters should be a guide to how well the club is seen to be doing. They are the eyes on the product being served up on the pitch & if they don't like what they see they will stay away. Just like M&S losing customers to shops whose clothing appeals to more women. If you don't like what is on sale change your supplier.

And the first thing the CEO did to save the struggling clothes business was immediately re-structure the management below him.

But that CEO hadn't just been promoted from working directly beneath the managers he now needed to replace.

It's an awkward scenario that we shouldn't be in - it's all too closely knit.

Have we found ourselves with an unthought out consequence of the game turning professional ? Pre superleague ,players had jobs that they were still doing when their playing days were over & could easily carry on being employed. Is there now an obligation to find jobs within clubs because they can't all become sports scientists & are we finding that there are now too many old boy networks in clubs. Not all ex players can fit into the general employment population. So do clubs carry on with this system or ,in our case,is a hatchet man director of rugby needed to root out whatever is sapping the energy from the club? Is the cost of our back room hitting our power to spend on players ?

Seen a few comments now that mention the happy clapper facebook clan, is this were they got their 95% are still behind us quote from?. If that's the case why are people on here not posting their frustrations on that page aswell.

Thanks for clarifying.

The board and owner are only custodians of the club. Many fans like me have seen numerous board members and owners come and go over time. The club is an embodiment of the passion of the fanbase and community. The entire raison d'etre of the club is to entertain and represent the aims, expectations and ambitions of the fanbase. The fanbase is the heart and soul of the club.
If the club is not delivering to it's purpose the fan base have a responsibility to voice displeasure, in my view.

In the past we had fans (myself included) that would hold sit ins or congregate outside the main entrance after the match who were vocal in their expression of dissatisfaction of the current plight. I've seen a few in my time and they do seem to precipitate a change. The Cullen/Castleford sit in 2008 and the Anderson/London evening in 2002 in recent memory.

But I don't see any of that now. There just seems to be 3 camps. 1) Those who clap and cheer come what may AKA "stripeys" 2) Those silently trudging off with an air of frustration and defeatism, and of course, 3) The invisible lot who have simply stopped going (until things change or forever)

They do but then get roundly set upon with comments such as "you are not a true fan, go and support someone else". Then of course the club delete them from their page.

What you say is spot on and i enjoy your posts. But what do you suggest we do, these sit ins and congregations round main entrance dont happen without a leader or a group if friends doing this and then others see it and join in. Back in the day i think we had a more adult following these days its full of kids who spend more time looking at their facebook page tham actually watching the game.

That on facebook, makes you think china and north Korea are right over their internet policy. It shouldn't be for everyone.

Well you're right there, the drummers are a bunch of mouthy kids, who seem to slink off early now, generally(in the south anyway) at full time you're left with the family element, who are desperate to get a high five off ash or Julian's headguard. The rest in the stand are politely applauding.

I've not seen one person throw their season ticket on the pitch at a player so far this year.

We've had so many years of mediocrity prior to the boom, maybe we are just reverting to what we know best and accepting being crap.

There's more apathy in the stands than on the pitch, possibly even more apathy than a Tony Smith motivational-speaking conference... it's a horrible atmosphere and without radical (perhaps even Divine) intervention we are going to slump right down into the lower leagues.

But back in the day when were crap is a lot different than now, the stadium the training facilities, infact everything about the club is so much better than back then, that what we a dishing up now is just unaceptable.