.... not my words. The words of Sgt. Wilson from Dad's Army. We're just TOO nice.

I've been saying this for years. When is the club going to grow a backbone, and be ruthless (SHOULD Price fail to deliver a GF win)? We, as a club, and the British public in general, accept and even promote failure. In 2018, Price loses TWO finals in 6 weeks, and we extend his contract (iirc). Laughable. Accepting loss. A typical British "plucky underdog" way of looking at it.

Case in point. Football World Cup 2018. England. Let's look at their results.
A stoppage time win against the might of Tunisia
Hammered lowly Panama
Lose to Belgium
Beat Columbia on penalties
A comfortable win against Sweden
An aimless loss to Croatia in the semis
Another loss to Belgium
So that's 3 losses out of 7, and a penalties win. WOW. Hardly the stuff of greatness, yet, at the SPOTY awards, Southgate is announced Coach of the Year. For what? At the same time Guardiola's City break record after record. Its as if the British/English psyche regards winning as a dirty word.
Look at some of Britain's success stories over the years, and they're pilloried by the media. Steve Davis, Nick Faldo, Nigel Mansell, Chris Eubank etc. All fantastic at their jobs, yet we make celebrity out of Eddie the Eagle, a bumbling Bruno, a crying Gazza

Now, I've just reread all the posts from yesterday's match, and the dumb rugby thread, and EVERY post which mentions the final, wants Salford to win. Not one wishes a Leeds victory. What have Leeds done to us, to not deserve our support.? They too, have 2 ex Wires in their side. See what I mean? Sticking up for the plucky underdog

Which brings me back to us. Since I started watching the Wire, in the last few months of the 70's, here's a list of the coaches we've had, from memory and their reason for leaving (again, iirc)

Benyon. Left us for Saints
Ashcroft. Left to work for his mate at Salford, Wilkinson.
Bowden. Sacked
Barrow. Left us for Oldham
Johnson. Sacked after 7.5 years
Dorahy. Jumped before he was pushed
DVDV. Left after 4 years
Anderson and Plange Sacked
Cullen. Jumped/sacked after 6 years
Horrible Lowes. Sackec/moved aside for Smith
Smith. Jupmed before he was sacked after 8 years
Price. Currently his 3 rd season.

And what have got to show for all that, since Kevin Ascroft.
A premiership
A Lancs Cup
A Regal Trophy
and 4 (admittedly, very sweet) CC wins. Sadly, let's not include the couple of LLS, as, unfortunately, they carry little kudos in the grand scheme of things
That's not good enough, for a club that's spent a lot of dosh under Higham and Moran, as well as the boom and bust under rPeter Deakin.

As I said, WE'RE JUST TOO NICE. Wigan, Leeds and Saints don't stand for tat mediocrity, but we do. Briers has been on the coaching staff now, for 7 or 8 seasons, and for what. We don't OWE this man a living.

If we don't land the big one in November, Price can do one, and I hope we show a few more the door, too.
We need to be ruthless

Absolutely on the money.

I'm sick to death of a player recruitment policy which seems to consist of throw money around and hope it sticks to a decent signing yet we accept mediocrity from the management (and I'm not just referring to the coaching staff).

After the gane on Tuesday I read a post on the Wigan site to the effect of "why do they spend money on has beens when they have these kids?" and it [ihurt like hell to read that[/i because it's true.

If we fail to win the GF forget player recruitment, the squad is fine, and strain every sinew, spend every spare penny and lavish as much time and attention as necesary on getting a proven winner in at the helm.

Make no mistake, Lam is on borrowed time at Wigan and I have my doubts that Woolf will last at Saints. They'll be making changes while we're still slapping ourselves on the back about another nearly season.

Let me just rein in the "has beens" tag. Salford is so called full of has beens & yet the thin in numbers squad is currently giving everything for their coach & club. Look at Brown who was the epitome of the worst scapegoat ever when he played for us ,he pulled the strings yesterday. Agar seems to be doing something right at Leeds too. Why are we offloading promising youngsters to other clubs when we should be pushing their enthusiasm & commitment as far up the ranks as we can ? What is the point of a our youth system if it doesn't work for our club?

The kids we lauded after Tuesday won't prosper under the current regime.

Doro? Latu will probably get more game time
Thewliss? Occasional appearences on the wing when we're down on numbers
Riley Dean? We'd rather play Hughes at stand-off

The likes of J Clarke, Akuola, Latu and even Widdop are the reason why if I was the agent for any of these youngsters I'd be telling them to look elsewhere.

How right you are ,Morrissey . Unfortunately,that outcome for club produced players has the knock on effect of discouraging kids from taking up the sport in the first place. Most kids don't want to play the game to be in an amateur team ,they want to one day become their playing idol, but in the British game that can easily be snuffed out in favour of an over the hill import.

Here is a list of all our Academy players that have made a debut in SL from 2005. I think you can see two things.

1. We haven't produced anywhere near enough SL standard players.

2. We haven't lost a high quality youngster that has made it at another club.

2005 Andy Braceck
Steve Pickersgill
Chris Riley

2006 Ben Harrison
Mike Cooper
Kevin Penny

2007 Anthony Jerram
Lee Mitchell
Matty Blythe

2008 Taylor Welch
Adam Neal

2009 Tyrone McCarthy
Alex Thompson

2010 Rhys Evans
Rhys Williams

2011 Gareth O'Brien

2012 Ben Currie
Brad Dwyer
James Laithwaite

2013 Glen Riley
Danny Bridge
Ben Evans
Ryan Shaw
James Mendeika (London)

2014 Gene Ormsby
Joe Philbin
George King
Toby King

2015 Declan Patton
Jack Johnson
Sam Wilde

2016 Morgan Smith

2017 Harvey Livett
Will Dagger

2018 Pat Moran
Luis Johnson

2019 Josh Thewliss
Riley Dean

2020 Ellis Robson
Eribe Doro
Ellis Longstaff
Connor Wrench
Nathan Roebuck

The problem with kids coming through our Academy is not that we do not play them, it's the quality in the past 15 years has not been good enough, and so we have bought ready made quality from other clubs and Oz.

Was it the 2013 GF when we were up against Wigan at half time? Two old blokes behind were saying that we’d as good as won. I told them not to count their chickens (or something similar) and low and behold, Wigan came out and literally battered us in the second half. Joel Monaghan unconscious (I know that was the end of the first half), Ratchford off with a knackered ankle and Lee Briers having to stitch us together at full back.

I was furious on the day with how Wigan played that 40 minutes and how they were allowed to come and injure us to win.

But they did win. Because their attitude was ‘we are going to take this title at any cost’. And since then, I’ve known that’s what we’ve lacked. We need a coach who will put that into us.

Point taken, but we clearly do have some youngsters in the current crop who look like they are SL quality. They need attention, nurturing, experience and patience.

Yes I agree. Baloo seems to be doing a good job, and this group look a lot better than we have seen in the past. Even so the club need to up the ante in getting hold of high quality 16 yr olds because Wigan and Leeds seem to snap most of them up. And from this years crop, its a bit ironic that Longstaff who looked really good on debut, was taken from Wigan;s academy.

Blimey, we lost 2 games and now these responses. We are nailed on for the play offs. even a chance of the LLS. We've won 9 out of 11. If Austin had gone through that gap we would be getting our popcorn ordered for the final. Get a grip poeople.
Agree on our recruitment though, some terrible signings.

Right on cue, I read a message from a senior representative of the club bemoaning the fact that Salford fans won't be in Wembley to see their team and the club will.miss out on the financial rewards.

Well, boo-hoo.

Their finances are a mess because they signed a bunch of mercenary has beens (sound familiar?) and their crowds are pitiful after years of mis-management. At least they are in the final and with some imagination can still recoup plenty.

I'm a Wire fan first and an RL fan a close second but I was rather hoping the club would be indulging in some insular, painful soul searching today not posting magnolia platitudes.

We are not nailed on for anything
No-one cares about the LLS
Yes but he didn't hit the gap and if that was a GF we'd have lost that too

At risk of being labelled a happy clapper. This feels a little but like a knee jerk reaction, seen as though everyone has been lauding the whole squads performances and attitude for the past month or so. I think we have to let the season run and see what response the team has to this, they will be bitterly disssapounted too. I hope they take this feeling in to the the playoffs and hopefully the final too.

I would have agreed with this not so long ago by the way, I thought price should have gone at the end of both of the past 2 seasons because we were an awful team to watch. He had us playing within ourselves for sure. That's not been the case recently though.

Good thread and I agree wholly with those who question our bizarre policy of seemingly accepting endless mediocrity.

Ultimately, it does beg the question of how long should a coach get in his job?

My own personal view is that, unless it is apparent he is an absolute disaster and the club is heading for the drop, 2 full seasons is a minimum - That is ample time to instill his own 'brand' of rugby on the team and to begin to show signs of actual improvement from when he took over the job.

From 2 years on, his job should be under annual review and if success isn't forthcoming AND it's obvious that onfield performances have stalled or are going backwards, then he should be replaced.

Using my criteria, unless Wire win the SL title this season, Price MUST be replaced for 2021 - Simply sticking with failure and somehow expecting a different outcome is just a recipe for more disappointment.

Haven't got a problem with replacing Price if he doesn't win the GF this season. What I'd like to know is who is actually in charge of recruitment, is it KF, SP, A.N.Other or done by committee?
The prop forward issue has been very frustrating, putting it mildly.

Please forgive my ignorance here, but if Karl Fitzpatrick has indeed got anything to do with our recruitment, then what exactly are his qualifications for doing so?

From memory, he was a bog standard player, he's never been a successful coach, he's got zero connection with our club, he's basically no more qualified for his job than most of us on here, so how, or why, is he in the position he is in?

By the way, this isn't intended to completely slate him, I'm just genuinely curious how he has got the job he has and, if recruitment is at least partly down to him, why we have chose to give him such responsibility when he appears to have little qualification for it.

Insanity

Add to this, the rumour (it MAY be a true story), that the recruitment of Burrell was down to Moran fancying taking a punt on him.
That's right. A concert promoter recruiting an ageing fella from another sport. Our recruitment since 2010, bar the obvious few, is poor, bordering on shambolic

Our next 3 games are Wigan (who won't play as badly again) , Cats ( big pack in autumn conditions) and Leeds (who ALWAYS play end of season rugby well) , finishing the season against Saints. With play off places being done by %age points, I'd say our place in them is anything but "nailed on".

Price MUST earn his money

Cue the board sticking their. Underpants on their heads and a pencil up each nostril

WIBBLE

To be fair to Mr Moran, if I'd put as much cash into the club as he has, then I might want to occasionally play fantasy rugby and fetch in some odd, almost unexplainable signing at random moments ( Johns was another of those and we tend to look back more fondly on that brief moment in our history).

Burrell was indeed an odd signing, but in the grand scheme of things was a no lose situation with regards to salary cap impact. It's the signings of the likes of Latu and Sita that need questioning with more scrutiny - whoever 'scouted' and recommended the likes of those 2 seriously need their position at the club reviewing.

They probably watched the YouTube clips we got shown in the stadium and thought let’s sign them

Wigan will be a tough match. Both teams with equal rest periods looking to put right a semi final loss.

Leeds and Catalans are both 'four pointers', the good news is that Leeds play in the CC final a few days afterwards so they may rest players, but this will be a huge risk for them if they are to make the top four. Depending upon how other results go Catalan could be make or break. It's also scheduled to be played at their place.

Top four is anything but nailed on.

The bizarre thing is, what you suggest is a lot more common than many might think.

It happens a lot in football and probably happens frequently in RL too.

YouTube is an agent's dream. Bang together a 5-10 minute highlights reel and you can make anybody look like a world beating football or rugby player. Find a gullible or desperate club and you suddenly have made yourself a few quid.. why do you think so many ex players become agents? Easy money for very little work...

Was partly why I made the comment, it’s funny how you never see the highlights of when they have had crap games. And before anyone says why would they, ofc I know why.