I have said many times, good player does not necessarily mean good coach. The best coaches in the League right now went away and did the hard graft, rather than waltz into the job off the back of past glories.

The Briers experiment has been, on the whole, a huge let down.

We lack flair, off the cuff play and 40/20s, things Briers excelled in, with a jersey on. We look rigid, and not very easy on the eye. A HUGE amount of blame lays at the feet of Briers.
Let's look at Patton. He should be blossoming under Briers tutelage. Instead, there are missing persons announcements for him, come game time. The lad isn't improving. He's not an upgrade on O'brien, and that's not difficult.

As karetaker and Ganson's allude to. Briers is more than culpable for our woes. A good player doesn't mean a good coach. England 66, anyone?

Well, there are two possibilities. One, Briers was a fantastic player but has been unable to translate that into coaching acumen and teach the likes of Patton the intricacies of attacking half back play.

Or two, the likes of Patton just aint good enough no matter who teaches them.

Ellery Hanley broke the incredible player / excellent coach conundrum and he's out of a job at the moment. If we recruit him will he turn us into 17 clones of him? If so, someone pick up the phone quick.

Or a third.....
It could be coached out of them?

Well again we don't actually know the coaching structure at the club in terms of who gets to do what, (or not) and who is pulling the strings etc.

Perhaps its something someone could ask at one of these "fan" nights?

Or fourth, he's a good half, playing in a rubbish team

Atm Agar is pulling the strings.

Please, come now, let's allow a little dispassionate truth to shed some light. Where is the slightest hint of evidence that Declan is a good half, is going to be a very good half and merits the time, patience and understanding that his colleagues do not? Tell me, cite some examples.

Unpalatable it may be, certainly unpopular, but the truth is that Ratchford, Brown & Gidley have all individually provided more moments of class, skill and game-breaking acumen than Patton has over the course of the season. None of our halves need to press their tuxs for the RFL awards this year, but Patton has been the worst.

At 23, he has been coached by one of Britain's best halves, played alongside an Australian international, another aussie of mercurial, X-factor genius and a couple of international playmakers, and he appears to have learnt very little.

Nice to see the Guardian calling Saturday and the season as a whole abysmal

Patton will make a very decent half back...in the championship....lower half of the championship. Sorry, i know he's a warrington lad and all that but simply not good enough for upper super league ambitions and never will be.

Well this meeting on Thursday, Agar delivering a video analysis session and Fitzpatrick is in attendance. I'm wondering if the video is going to The three stooges go to market. I know they like to hold back important information till it suits them but they seriously going to have to throw some crumbs out there.

It's the Chris Riley syndrome.

What better way to avoid the issue than to place the elephant in the room eh.

I suppose unless we have prior experience with a super league team, the video analysis session could be pretty dire and be none the wiser.

Yeah at the end of the video analysis I would say "Well that looks good, so why have we ended up in the qualifiers?"

Think I will ask that question.

Perhaps Riley & Penny are 2 good examples of our failings as a club this season. Instead of providing these two lads with the necessary coaching to improve their skills, the powers that be resorted to buying in in the form of firstly Hicks, then Michael Monas & King who were great for us when they were over here during our most successful seasons ,but once the Aussie conveyor belt dried up Smith hasn't had the option of buying in players of that calibre. Add to that the forwards from the southern hemisphere who have been & done the job for us only to dwindle gradually in numbers till we are now fielding glorified reserves at times. We bought a man of steel to play hooker a few years back who has been a shadow of his former self since leaving Cas. What we have had for the last 8 years is a coach who was good when the calibre of players we needed could be bought from other clubs, but what we need now is a head coach who can turn raw academy & youth players into great players of the future which i don't think any of our coaches are capable of. Which players have benefitted or improved from their time at the Wire ? Over at Cas ,the coaches have turned unspectacular & average players into an excellent team & all because of their coaching skills ,with game plans to suit every occasion to create overlaps & score tries & make the players look like superstars. On matchdays ,Cas are turning out physically & mentally prepared to win games. This is the era of the skillful coach.

100% spot on. When Smith arrived here we had a good squad that just wasn't performing,fair enough him and the coaches we had at the time turned it around. Since we lost them players KIng,Hicks,Morley Carvell, both Monas etc etc, we have never replaced the likes of them, I've seen teams sign some good players and wonder how we missed them. Anyway as you say the quality of players available these days are not as good as those mentioned, so the style of coaching should change to reflect this and if clubs are not looking at Cas as an example I find that to be madness.

I think Patton has something and is worth sticking with. I also think he played with a leg injury for a lot of this season. I've always felt him and Ratch would complement each other in the halves.

There was a moment in 2nd half of the Halifax match where he did what a good half should do - attacked the line / ran across it to draw the man and then looked up for a runner to hit - there wasn't one so he kept running, looking for a runner until he reached the sideline and got tackled. All it needed was one runner hitting a good line to take a flat pass. That moment for me summed up his / our season. The halves look awful because they don't have any options to hit.

I remember watching Luke Gale play for London and Dec reminds me a bit of him at that stage - if you put Patton under Powell he'd look like a different player.

Brown has been abject though - the banana kick in broken play with 3 minutes remaining being just the latest low point that could have blown the game for us when it should have been drilled into the corner. Utterly brainless.

I also agree with the comment about coaching versus managing - Smith is (was) a good Manager, we need a coach.

Once the Sandow situation became apparent (and [iplease[/i don't anyone [idare[/i say "it was too late", "how were we to know?" - we have player welfare officers, managers and ar*e wipers falling out of the doors) we should have broke the bank for Albert Kelly when he left HKR.

Every time I see him I think, there is a player who would have made a huge difference to us.

Over the years the Guardian have been asked to hold off from producing negative articles by TS and the club and in return the club offer the latest scoop to the Guardian.

Do the comments in the report from Saturdays game signal an end to this agreement between TS, the club and the paper and in turn signal the end of the road for TS?

I'm not sure that I'd be interested in a player who was willing to leak team info to the opposition.

The change in tone was quite noticeable, possibly the first time they have openly questioned him, from what I can recall.

Completely agree 100%

And look at Wakefield I personally think Chris Chester has done a brilliant job with what resources he has to hand.. Good coaching

I absolutely understand the current love in for Powell, but suggest we do a comparison between him and Smith in 5 years or so when his star has faded. Don't forget, if we'd done the comparison 5 years back Powell was a failed Leeds coach scraping around in the Championship.