He's clearly not in Tony Smith's plans when it comes to our starting 17, is he? He's nothing more than a squad player who will fill in when or if needed. He's a step up from Laithwaite and Wheeler, so what's the big deal? Matty Blythe being a versatile squad option, on peanuts, is hardly going to dictate whether we win the Grand Final or not I wouldn't have thought.

Because when one coach goes out you have to get another coach in so the relative merits are important. And Powell would be very likely to be at or near the top of our list.

Ah I see, succession planning? We don't usually bother with that

Unless Agar quit being a head coach at Wakefield to come to us under the understanding that he was being prepared for the succession at Warrington.

The question would be at what time do you make the move. If Smith doesn't win the GF this year would it be time to give Agar a go, or do we make him keep waiting in the wings like Gordon Brown stewing on Blair's departure.

Ha ha. Personally I would be preparing a short list of candidates for 2018 now and doing the ground work. So we have options. They could come in as director of rugby at any time.

Has to? We don't have the backs to win SL

For all this negativity, Smith has navigated a huge transition for the club. From the 2012 GF team, only Ratchford, Westwood and Hill were in the squad last year (plus Cooper this season), so if we're being realistic, he has reached major finals with two Warrington teams.

Looking at the Saints, Bradford and Leeds teams at the end of their golden generation, I think we've faired ok. The important thing to do is to back up last year with another trophy this season, and I'm confident we can do that. It's just a shame people don't really recognise the LLS as a trophy

The sky publicity machine has turned the GF into the must have victory.

publicity machine nothing, It IS the point of the season that we play.

Transition at Wigan seems to be a smooth way of life.
It's not even a talking point there.
They just keep churning them out and the biggest export for other clubs ate there surplus to requirements.

I know what you mean, and it's a little unfair that the best team over the course of the year isn't recognised more for their achievements.

However, all clubs know the way the system works and plan accordingly for the aim of winning the knockout competition at the end of the regular season. So even though Leeds winning from 5th seemed unfair to the team who finished top, it was known at the start of that season that the teams would have to peak for the playoffs and not necessarily benefit from winning the league.

But we haven't won a tap when it comes to grand finals
we are just the best of the rest....We haven't had a golden generation at all. ....We had Lee briers and Michael Monaghan....

We've half replaced monas with Clark and still haven't found a replacement for Briers and have never had a scrum half we've been happy with since Nat Wood.

It just feels like we are winging it from year to year because we've got money. .....

It's certainly true that we have consistently bought players, but TS also tried to win the GF with an old squad. In fact we used to get hassle from other posters about it on a regular basis. You only need to go back to 2012 / 2013 and see that we had Bret Hodgson, Chris Bridge (crocked), Lee Briers, Adrian Morley, Monas, Gareth Carvell (crocked), Micky Higham, Paul wood etc. None of them were spring chickens. We should have been recruiting some quality younger players at that point ( or before) rather than trying to squeeze the last drip from the grape pulp. Instead we had a very unbalanced squad with a lot of youngsters at the other end - Rhys Evans, Williams, GOB, Currie, Laithwaite, Dwyer. I think we were guilty of not planning for the future. Then of course the inevitable happened and we lost a lot of high quality players very quickly.

Time will tell whether or not TS can finally nail the GF, but for me his big drawback is longer term planning, and perhaps also being unrealistically optimistic about the quality of the players in his squad.

During that era Smith was recruiting younger players: Atkins, Myler, Ratchford and Hill were all early 20s when they joined.

However, we had a salary cap and so to do more recruitment of young players would have involved a trade-off of releasing some of those older players while they still had a couple of good seasons in them. If we had started moving on Morley, Briers, Carvell, Hodgson, Monaghan etc earlier in favour of other younger signings that weren't at their level yet, we would have had a dip in performance which might have meant we weren't as close to winning the Grand Final at the time. There's also a risk that those players would have been picked up for a season or two by the likes of Leeds, Saints, Wigan and won Grand Finals with them and then people would have said, is the goal about permanently "building for the future" or is it about going all out to try and actually deliver the Grand Final.

Although we didn't win, we gave ourselves the best shot by dragging every last bit of potential out of that team.

Also remember at the time there was no big call for us to be moving on those players and this talk about the team being left to get old with nobody waiting in the wings has just come about with hindsight. At the time the talk on these boards was "the future is bright" with exactly those names mentioned above: Evans, GO'B, Currie, Dwyer were seen as real stars in the making and you would get threads on here with a "future Wire team" full of those and comments about how bright the future looks.

The harsh truth is - our young players were not as good as Wigan's. If they were, then Shaun Wane wouldn't be being hailed for his Grand Final wins. People would have looked at his side and said how on earth did he let Wigan get to a situation where he was just throwing Academy lads in and expecting them to turn in to a winning side. Last year that Wigan team that he lined up against us in the Grand Final was basically no names that nobody would have heard of a year or so before. Why is Wane not being panned for that?

The difference is Wigan's lads were quality young players who could step up and win a Grand Final, whereas most of ours have not lived up to their early high rating.

Distinct possibility of bring this year's Leeds now. On current form can anybody see points from Wigan home Leigh and Saints away and Hull home so could easily be 0 from 7.

No way back from there

Where does the blame lie other than at Smiths door

its a shame that after all the great memories he gave us all those years ago, its going to end badly.

i wonder how long it takes for the situation to go 'full cullen'.

If we end up 0-5 or even 0-6 it will come to a head i think.

Remember it only went "Full Cullen" as we had to prise his stiff white fingers off the levers of power, as he realised he was not getting a gig elsewhere afterwards. TS may go one or two ways. He may be a proud man and do the decent thing or he may be stubborn, not seeing what is obvious and plough on regardless.

If TS does go and the replacement is Agar I think this board will break. Call it a coincidence but the decline in the attractiveness of our play has come under his tenure.

'i dont coach the attacking plays, i leave that up to the players'

that was fine with Briers, Monaghan and Hodgson around... not so now..... when he lost those guys, he lost the people coaching the plays.... i think he realised he needed to do something. So in comes Agar to take over that side of things.

I wonder if a hammering by Wigan will be the catalyst.

Sounds like you're hoping we get one.

Not gonna happen, too many of our strike players out injured. We may grind out a win, but not a hammering.

Surely you mean a close loss + not a hammering!Wigan will win comfortably.

If TS does go and the replacement is Agar I think this board will break. Call it a coincidence but the decline in the attractiveness of our play has come under his tenure.'"

Who do you think we would get if we parted company with Smith at this point?

Your suggestions of Des Hasler, Craig Bellamy and Wayne Bennett are all at the start of an NRL season, do you think it's realistic that any of them will come over to Warrington at this point?

I'd also be surprised if Daryl Powell wanted to quit Castleford at this point with his team looking so good.

So Agar is a likely option although given what you said about the decline in attractiveness of our play coming under his tenure - what about Willie Poching? Our best era co-incided with him being on the coaching staff.

I would expect that the other favourites would be Steve McNamara or Paul Anderson, Denis Betts may also be in the frame after several seasons of getting Widnes to punch above their weight.

A name out of left field could be David Kidwell if he could combine the job with NZ national team.

Another left field could be Kevin Sinfield, if he is interested in coaching. He's got a job at the RFL for now, and perhaps he has the secret nudge from Leeds that if he wants to be a head coach they can facilitate, but maybe he would be interested in cutting his coaching teeth at another SL club.

if Smith walks now, or is removed, then i think the club might make a short term appointment.. which would probably be Agar.

bad times.