We had to rely on the crowd jeering Danny brough to beat Huddersfield. The team nearly lost it.

As the zoo keeper said to the suicidal pervert "don't poke the bear".

It's not a matter of "hate", that sounds infantile. It's that some of us share he view that Tony Smith, as good as he was in his early tenure, has reached the end of his life cycle with Warrington. This is evidenced by our poor performances, league position, and squad makeup. I don't believe many people are that encouraged by our wins over Widnes and Huddersfield.

Notwithstanding this I thank Tony Smith for the 2009-2012 period where we played the best rugby I have seen us play.

TS relied last season on two gambles that didn't pay off, they almost did but didn't! The resulting issues is that the team is lacking the all-round quality of previous seasons. Recruitment has been poor over the last three seasons, depth of the squad is lacking as a result. We have some genuinely good prospects coming through, but need to backed up with quality.

TS pulled us up to stand tall with the elite, we know from bitter experience that we haven't crossed the GF line with a win which hurts, but like others I thank him for the effort.

I don't really want him out, but he really does need to overhaul this squad and bring top quality players in to support the talent coming through. I look at him and think that he is lost at present and that is not a good image to project.

give us a forecast for the Wakey game then.
they have bigger better forwards, faster backs, they have more creative half backs. ....and the crazy mothers even have the gall to have a winger on each wing



We play terrible rugby.
It's a poor squad, the replacement of top quality players has been woeful.
We have a jobs for the boys set up that just doesn't bode well. see saints for another example. ..Christ we even have a former water carrier as a chief executive.
Tony Smith is answerable to no one hence him not being concerned for his job while overseeing a disgraceful run of results.

Our hooker is out for the Wakey game ...In times gone by we could call on mickey Higham and Jon Clarke to cover Michael Monaghan. .... We now have Brad Dwyer. Or guess what ? a Tony Smith special. ..a utility player

Hater ...? Never in a million years but hopefully I'll always be able to tell the difference between quality and absolute ....

That's a fair post.
I like the bit about our water carrier CEO

Won the league is exactly what we've done twice. We failed to win the GF on three occasions and we really missed out in 2011 when we lost to Leeds in the GF eliminator, that's when we were at our best! But winning the GF makes you SL champions, it doesn't mean you've won the league

Quote ="Psychedelic Casual"Won the league is exactly what we've done twice. We failed to win the GF on three occasions and we really missed out in 2011 when we lost to Leeds in the GF eliminator, that's when we were at our best! But winning the GF makes you SL champions, it doesn't mean you've won the league'" Yes we were at our best 2011. Shall we defer to the RFL definition of Super League winners? www.rugby-league.com/superleague ... us_winners

Quote ="Psychedelic Casual"Won the league is exactly what we've done twice. We failed to win the GF on three occasions and we really missed out in 2011 when we lost to Leeds in the GF eliminator, that's when we were at our best! But winning the GF makes you SL champions, it doesn't mean you've won the league'" Yes we were at our best 2011. Shall we defer to the RFL definition of Super League winners? www.rugby-league.com/superleague ... us_winners

Huh? Champions of "Super League" there within those two words, one is of significance as to what you have won.
Finishing in position 1 after 30 games makes you league leaders.
I thought you would have got the concept by now.

Having finished League Leaders twice we got our just desserts a silver hub cap, the "Super League Champions" were crowned at OT.

The LLS is recognition of the best team in the League over the length of the season, having played all their opponents several times.
The Challenge Cup is quite obviously a straight knockout competition.
The GF is the outcome of yet another knockout competition where the entrants are the top clubs in the League at the end of the season. This has been boosted by Sky as the 'Major Trophy' because that's where they've spent all their cash and a Knockout Final always boosts the ratings!!

Ask any rugby league fan, player, ex-player, coach, director, CEO which they would prefer their club to win. League Leaders Shield or Grand Final. To disguise Tony's failing to win a Grand Final by citing the League Leaders shield is the very definition of acceptance of failure.

Finish top you should win the Super League trophy.

Finish in the top 8 you should compete for the SL shield or something as a mickey mouse cup.

CC stays as it is

That is as maybe, but the clubs know the top prize at the start of each season and what they need to do to win it.

I disagree, it cannot be an even comp to finish top while there is magic weekend. It is never certain the team finishing top is the best.

Would be a valid point but most SL teams try to place themselves in the top8 to be in with a chance of getting to gf so performances on a weekly basis are geared to positioning ourselves into the back end of the season with as strong a squad available so it's a fair assumption to make that some teams don't try to finish top or will take a loss or two to rest players etc as it is very few teams actually aim to finish top of the league all it means now is that the team in top spot was the most consistent over a season and has been relatively lucky injury wise.

Premiership football brings in plenty of money from tv rights and the winner of the league at the end of the comp gets the trophy. SL is a pauper by comparison and contrives ever more complicated systems: 'top six playoff', 'super eights' etc etc ( we know it will change again next year) in order to keep the fans coming through the gate and the money rolling in. If clubs didn't need the gate money we would still be playing 'first past the post'.

Its only advertising that makes the "SUPER LEAGUE TROPHY" the one to win. Lets face it, if you put a million pound advertising campaign behind a bag of dried rabbit turds people would be fighting at the tills to get it. How many Syrian refugees are coming over here and then investing in a pair of ripped jeans to keep the cold out in their Glasgow squat ?

The reason the LLS is played down is because the RFL / clubs don't want it to become coveted by the fans - because then there would be no need for the Super 8's and a few more money generating games would there ?

The format has not changed I was young at the time but did we not have the premiership or regal trophy which was the top8 playoff for a trophy ??

It's probably about TV money more than gate money. Maybe first past the post would be better for gate money as it would place more meaning on league fixtures for the top clubs which can start to become a bit immaterial towards the end of the season when you know you're likely to make top four.

The important money in the game is the TV contract which is based on how many subscribers the game can draw in as a product - and some of these will be people that watch multiple sports and aren't hard core rugby league fans affiliated to a team but will value the overall TV subscription higher because it has these games on it - and RL is a very attractive television product because it's easy for a newcomer to pick up and has a lot of action. Having the season build up to a crescendo of big games makes the TV product more exciting for a casual watcher who is less bothered about the fairness of the best team over the season getting rewarded, but wants an exciting product to watch on TV.

In countries where there are huge distances between sporting teams, like USA, Australia, there isn't the same culture of being an "away fan" as there is in the UK, so TV is really the key market for their sports, and they tend to have all of their sports based around playoffs and Grand Finals.

I do agree that TV is a key driver to SL having a play-off system to decide the champions, but I think you're missing the the point with your last paragraph. In Aus the two dominant codes of football were, until relatively recently, based almost solely in the two major cities, so the travel distance for most away fans was actually less than in the UK. And in both the US and Aus, play-offs to decide the champions were established long before TV was the dominant media. Tony Collins writes (in I can't remember which book) at some length about the relationship between sport and the media, and his exploration of this theme is very interesting; for anyone wanting to criticise Sky too much or pine for 'the good old days', it's worth a read.

The fact is professional sport is an entertainment business, now more so than ever, and to generate revenue organisers will exploit whatever means they can. The football reference always makes me laugh, as people completely overlook the convoluted way promotion is decided when saying 'football doesn't need to use play-offs'.

All that said, there's a prize for finishing top, and those rubbishing it are predominantly in the 'Smith out' camp (not that it's a campaign, mind), and it undermines their argument that we won this last year, so bizarrely they have to downplay our success.

This is getting tiresome. I could easily say the "Smith In" camp (not that it's delusional blind faith, mind) use the winning of an award that is not coveted by any of the teams that do not win it, to attempt to obfuscate what has been a steady decline since 2012, masking the fact that we have 0 GF wins from 7 attempts since the 2010 season. At least this season that white elephant will not be available.

I just don't understand how people idolising Smith are blind to how we are playing currently.

We are rank.

I cannot believe people still debate the gf win vs LLS shield nonsense. 1 is THE prize to win....the other a little bonus (no more). It doesnt matter who or what made the GF the thing to win....but it is the thing to win, and we havent yet. Sport is cyclical and great teams make hay when it's their time in the sun and they even grab the odd trophy when they're in the shade. The last six/seven years shouldve seen us win a lot more than we have done. 3 challenge cups is ok but we really should have at least 1 championship in there. The worst thing is we are awful to watch....as we were last season bar sandow. I could put up with the turgid rugby if it grabbed that first GF win....but that's not gonna happen.

Perhaps the first thing that you need to understand is that many people supporting Smith aren't "idolising" him and by and large they aren't "blind to how we are playing currently", they just have a different view to you and others of what to do next? Sorry if it's "tiresome" particularly as I think that most of the "tiresome" posts come from people with a different opinion to you.

Quite rightly, I would suggest that they may be working to a different set of criteria to you when measuring what success is. We may each have differing views on why a particular success or failure has happened...excuses if you like and some may be don't lay all of that 'failure' at Smith's door. There are those that accept that life isn't black and white, more shades of grey. If you don't win the GF, but, do something else positive in a season, say win a "white elephant", appear in two finals, bring some exciting prospects through, improve upon the previous season then it might be disappointing, but, is it a sack-able offence after five games in the following year because we didn't win the GF last time out?

Sure, ultimately the 'buck stops' with TS, people recognise this and playing in the middle 8's this year might see Smith's support evaporate, even those with seemingly blind faith recognise that Smith's race will eventually be run.

Does Stuart Pearce still watch us? I haven't seen him on TV for ages.

I think, Uncle Rico, if you take a big step back, what you'll see is that certain posters/people on here, will criticize the club, no matter what. Some people are just pre-disposed to it. The Leeds board for example, has had people adamant about sacking McDermott, for years and years, and were quite happy last season to go "HA HA, i told you so!"

I can guarantee you that the same people on here were criticizing the club back between during our time winning trophies, as its more important for them to be right in their own minds. The club can do no right whatsoever in their eyes.