But is setting that kind of success criteria in advance the best way of making a decision on the club's future?

If Powell is better than Smith for 2018, why should Smith get given an extra year just on sentiment for winning the Grand Final this year. The right business decision is what is best for the club, and if Powell would improve the club then he should be brought in whatever. What's to say that if we carried on with Smith as a reward for the GF win, that Powell was then picked up by Saints or Wigan instead and was no longer available.

But if Powell isn't better than Smith, then why would it be right to bring him in just because Escare missed that kick. Is it worth sacrificing a less good season in 2018, just because you were committing to your success criteria.

I would argue that the belief that "sport is like that" in terms of making decisions on a knife edge, is why a lot of bad decisions are made in sport. The decision on a coach should always be, if X is your coach, is X better than the best available Y at any time. If yes, then keep the coach, regardless of performance. If there's a better Y available, (ie you can realistically get them in), then bring them in and thank X for the memories.

I understand the point you are making, but any incumbent should be given time to achieve the goals rather than be swapped out the minute someone better qualified becomes available. Not least because of the overhead that is incurred in changing the head coach and the management team. Also not many coaches will be kept on if they lose 12 games in a row (say) and there was no-one better available.

Anyway as far as our board go, just look at what happened after Cullen, we got Jimmy Lowes. Doesn't strike you as the best decision ever made.

Having said that, I only advocated Powell as a last resort if the likes of Des Hasler, Craig Bellamy or Wayne Bennett were not available. If any of them were I would change immediately.

I think it's a little bit different from our point of view. You have won the Grand Final a number of times we have never won it , as your fans and the Sky team enjoy reminding us regularly..
I don't think it's totally crazy that a few Wire fans are getting a little fed up, Tony Smith changed the whole culture of the club 3 Challenge cup wins, 2 LLS's and 3 Grand Final appearances but that doesn't mean he's immune from criticism..
Pretty much every Wire fan knew we needed to strengthen the 3/4 line at Wire but Smith despite the funds and backing available didn't bother..
We sit bottom after 2 winnable games and face a run of 6 very tough games are we not allowed to be concerned?

The points in your first paragraph, should be taken in to consideration as part of the decision of whether there's a better option available. You're basically making a judgement on the net benefit of the change option, where you net off the costs of paying off separation settlements, disruption of changing the coaching team. But also where your existing coach has been in place for a while, there may be a potential benefit in change in terms of new ideas, if you can see that things have got stale and decline has set in. I think a lot of the Wire fans that want to change Tony Smith are concerned about this. The reason I am not is because we improved last season - top of the league and two finals was a superb season even though we finished trophyless, its not really evidence to me that things have gone stale under Smith.

Also in the decision of better option you have to assess the risk that a supercoach from one environment might not transfer the results over to a new environment, eg Ian Millward going from Saints to Wigan; Fabio Capello managing England. If Craig Bellamy was available I'd be very interested but we'd need to think about whether his methods would map over to our players. That's where an internal appointment can be a safer option, and guys like Wane, Radford and Noble (at Bradford) were all internal appointments that did very well in their first SL jobs.

On getting Lowes after Cullen I actually think this was a strategic decision from the board, they looked around and saw that there was someone coming off contract with England after the World Cup in a year's time and thought well in the absence of anybody good being around now lets give Lowes a go to tide us over, rather than bring in someone new who was less preferable. If there's nobody suitable available I'd either want to keep Smith until there was, or if he quit, just appoint Agar/Briers to fill the gap.

Sick of hearing all this tripe!
Alex Ferguson was one game away from getting the sack, Mark Robins scored a match-winner,and the rest is history........T.S. will get it right!

Maybe he will maybe he won't.

But you can't deny this is the slowest backline in SuperLeague, all assembled by Smith, despite having the most monetary resources at his disposal

If you can name me a less effective right side partnership in SuperLeague than Russell and Evans I'd be surprised

I was hoping that Tony Smith would get it right, a number of people wanted him to step down after 3 grand final losses.
But I was ok for him to continue ,as last year we topped the table and lost out in both finals by very fine margins..
Everyone could see that we had a full back on the wing and a centre who never scores try's and creates nothing.. We were linked with a number of players but Tony Smith signed 3 forwards and resigned Matty Blythe!! Nothing to address the issues in the 3/4 line...
He had the opportunity to get it right in the off season but he recruited in the wrong areas.. It's not tripe we are bottom of the table with a tough run of fixtures to come..

I don't for the fife of me understand why we are STILL accommodating Evans, Russell and Atkins in the team. As soon as the ball is spread to Evans all attacking play completely stops. Atkins, Yeah he can hit a good line but the two vital tribute a centre must have, create space and pass to his winger, he doesn't possess. He can't do either! Russell must be the only Winger/fullback (Apparently) in the world who: Can't pass, can't catch, can't position himself, and can't defend... But yeah he's got a good scoot so that ok apparently.

We've been crying out for two Centres and at least one winger now for years and the problem STILL hasn't been addressed.

Wayne Bennett; last pot six years ago.

Craig Bellamy; four years ago.

Imagine thinking Des Hasler, Wayne Bennett or Craig Bellamy would be available for us.

brilliant

if you look at the stats from the Brisbane game (League Express had them) Evans and Russell were both outstanding in their different ways. Russel's try also took a lot of scoring. We were very good against the Broncos, not so much in the other two games. However, as others have said Castleford are an extremely good team and any opponent will need to be at their best to beat them this year.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm with Sally Cinnamon, dumping TS for a completely inexperienced coach just because some fans have 'had enough' is a ridiculous idea.

The blue chip NRL coaches never tend to come to the UK. How many NRL winning coaches have come to SL clubs? Tim Sheens at Salford thats about it.

does our future manager need to have won a grand final or an nrl final?? or do the club need to believe that that the new guy can win the gf with warrington.

Powell is mentioned a lot would we be more of an attacking threat with him in charge probably yes, would we have a tactically astute manager that can set his team up to play the opposition yes these are two things that we are lacking at the moment and if look back over smiths time these have been deficiencies in most of his warrington teams, he was lucky to have had the players he had in 2011/12 as we had some intelligent rugby players today thats not the case.

Precisely. I cannot think of one valid argument as to why any one the above mentioned elite coaches would come over here when they probably have their pick of any NRL club.

Some people really are living in a fantasy land.

Wasn't our former successful reserve coach Richard Marshall touted at one time as a future Smith successor?

Whats the point in having two players who have outstanding games every other month? Would much rather bring players like Livett into the squad who are consistent every week. The fact still remains. We are accommodating player like Atkins, Evans and Russell week in, week out and have done for too long.

Imagine thinking Langer and Johns would be available to us.

Just needs some ambition and £££.

Nice analogy but to slightly undermine it Alex Ferguson was 3.5 years into his reign then. Not 8 years.

You're going back almost 20 years ago. One came out of retirement and the other came over for three games so I don't see how that's comparable.

Yep you are right, I'm in a dream land we could never aspire to getting anyone else other than Tony Smith and certainly not a top NRL coach with a track record.

I must have also dreamt that Tim Sheens was coaching Hull KR and that he had won 4 NRL Grand Finals with 2 separate teams.

Anyway most of the blinkered on here were advocating more time for Paul Cullen when it was clear he should have gone years earlier. I suspect the same will happen again.

Tim Sheens won trophies but a long time ago, so him going to Salford / Hull KR was more a reflection of the fact he didn't have the top clubs still in for him. Similar to Brian Noble going to Salford or now Toronto or Ian Millward going to Leigh.

If we appointed Sheens, Noble or Millward we would be getting someone with history but would we see that as a positive move forward.

Back in the Cullen era, I agreed with you, we had him about 2 years too long, and he did have his loyalists that would have supported him whatever. With Cullen we were clearly slipping backwards. The peak point of his era was probably Andrew Johns debut at the HJ, from that day onwards there was a steady decline, that was punctuated by the occasional thrilling win, but we were clearly mired around the fringes of the playoffs. With TS, we actually improved over the last 12 months, compared to the year or two before. We topped the league table and reached two finals. Your argument that Smith has gone on too long is based on the fact losing those Grand Finals, plus the fact we lost a couple before. It's not like Cullen where the direction of travel is backwards, the argument about changing the coach here would be if we think something extra is needed to get us over the line in the big ones. It's like Leeds around 2004 where Daryl Powell had got rid of the old Leeds culture of big names that flatter to deceive but was losing finals and semi finals, and Gary Hetherington made a change (ie getting rid of his mate) to bring in someone he thought would bring an edge to take them to the next level, and it worked.

OK. We seem to keep moving the argument though. Firstly it's we can never aspire to get a top NRL coach. Then when I point out that Hull KR have done exactly that it's "we can never get an NRL coach who has won things recently". Incidentally Sheens last GF win was only 2 seasons before Smiths.

Agree about Cullen, we were clearly slipping backward. Despite our squad quality and playing style slipping backward I am not arguing that Smith has gone on too long yet, but if we end this season having failed again we may as well make the change.

I don't remember saying that we couldn't get anyone else other than Smith, just the three that you've mentioned wouldn't leave their NRL clubs to come here at the moment no matter what you say.

When he won the FA Cup not the Premier League title