This is the thing. Some people are better suited and make excellent assistant or specialist skills/conditioning coaches.

Good luck to him.

I think he would be better suited to being someone who gets things put in place. Once you go past the team and delve deeper, he set up training camps, shown a pathway for the England Knights to the full team, kept in contact with the oz based lads, unearthed Widdop (how many people honestly knew about him prior to his first call up?). These were just a few off the top of my head and I'm sure there will be plenty more which will probably go unnoticed.

I remember him doing a TV interview not long after he got the job. I thought he sounded more like a business man than a coach.

You can argue that he chose the wrong pair but you cant argue that selecting a half back pairing and sticking with it. Instead of chopping and changing it every couple of months and unsettling a team.

Good luck to him in the future. But thankfully he wont be near selecting the England team in the near future!

I think he did a decent job to be honest. People slated his appointment which is fair enough because he hadn't really achieved enough to warrant the job but many then steadfastly refused to acknowledge any good he did from then onwards. We did better than most expected, there's no shame in being 2 points away from beating the kiwis and 8 points away from beating the aussies. If he really did get everything wrong like many said we would have been hammered in both games like most people predicted before the cup started. People set their expectations, he exceeded them, so people changed their expectations so that they could still deem him a failure.

Hang on a minute. So it's SM's fault Graham and the others went out boozing is it? I noticed that when Graham came back into the team he could do no wrong. If anything i'd blame Graham Hock et al for us not making it through to the final. I'not SM's biggest fan by any means, but to say he should have just let it slide is ridiculous...

I blame Sinfield for shooting out of the line and allowing Johnson to score

What were the expectations he exceeded exactly? He was in charge for 3 years and got one win from 7 against the other 2 elite nations. The minimum requirement for the WC was to reach the final IMO, and regardless of how close he came, he failed. His time in charge was littered with odd squad and team selections and the way he handled the media during the WC was nothing short of embarrassing.

You get my point though...

Hang on, he let hardaker leave with "no disciplinary issues" to be promptly fined by his club. Having previously disciplined the above for the supposed exact same thing. At best that's horrible inconsistency.

I (along with 99% of people) don't know all the details about what went on - but it smacked of him trying to be the big I am, I can drop you from the team if I want. Any man who has to say I'm king is no king etc. If he had any sort of control on the team it wouldn't be a case of "not letting it slide" as it wouldn't of happened.

He had no control of the team, that is a coaches job, he failed in that, that's his responsibility. Did he do anything special to make up for this? Not really, that's why we lost, that's why he didn't meet expectations.

I never mentioned Hardaker or said that SM was a great coach, but how many brain cells does it take to think to lay off the booze for 6 weeks while you compete in one of the biggest sporting events of your career? The players aren't completely blameless in all this and some don't seem to have two brain cells to rub together no matter how good they are at rugby...

So McNamara is moving to Australia and managing England part-time. They're having a laugh. He made a mess of doing the job full-time and yet he's going to supervise the players from the other side of the world!
With a good coach we would have beaten Australia in the first group match, beaten Fiji in the semi and had a good go against Australia in the final.
He's like the schoolteacher whose class can get away with anything. His selection was rubbish. He even picked a Burgess who couldn't get into first grade. At South Sydney.
Mmm...Widdop or Chase? 90% of fans got it right but the penny only dropped for the semi.
What a hard game that was. I know, let's not use Ablett at all and just give Burrow a cameo appearance.
He must be the least successful club coach to become national team manager.
I despair.

The RFL are not commercially aware which is the reason IFL is not happy. The fact they have just extended the contract of a coach who refused to talk to the media reinforces the opinion of their incompetence top down.

That's before you delve deeper and see the logistical nightmare at hey have and who is paying these for these flights?

His record at club level and the meaningful international games is extremely poor.

The sooner the clear out at red hall, the better. We need commercially aware professionals who will drive the organisation forward rather than this finger in the air approach currently in place.

Tis unbelievable. The RFL view McNamaras time in charge 'a success' just imagine what they deem to be a failure, and these people are in charge of our sport.

So, we have a part time national coach who will as far away from the players as possible?

Then we have the whole London fiasco, our sport is in good hands isn't it?

Give it a couple of years and he'll be in an ideal place to watch the majority of the English side live.

The only issue I have is will he be coming backfire the mid season camps? Over then that there's no issue whatsoever in my mind.

Strewth. Did anyone see this one as an option? What on earth are the suits in Red Hall playing at? If their excuse is that there's nobody available or interested in the job for the moment, then why not just leave the position vacant? When is the next England game? Have we got an Exiles match in the middle of year or is it the 4 nations in 12 months time?

If as they stated earlier in the year that they're incapable of looking at more than one thing at a time, then do things in order: sponsorship, league(s) format for 15/16 [ithen[/i have a look at the national coach. Either that or put a woman in charge - even some blond bimbo Barbie from Essex could do a better job that that lot.

I think the main reason SM got the job was because he was the only person available who would do it on a full-time basis. Now it's gone down to a part-time role surely there are better candidates? Unless it's a rouse so he can try to convince SBW and Frank the tank and couple of others to play for England.

This just beggars belief!
Laughable and the RFL are the joke!
He couldn't coach the squad whilst he was here never mind trying to do it from Australia.

You lot seem to be a bit slow on here, surely you can see that this all part of a bigger picture.
Whilst Stevie Mac is in Aus holding the position of part time England coach, he will have a deputy in England who will be a part time player coach as his assistant.

The one and only Sir Kevin, sounds crazy I know but stranger things have happened.

Absolute utter fkin joke, so someone who as a full time coach was useless is now doing the job part time on the otherside of tthe world?
Yeah that should improve us



Are we surprised that chairman left the rfl meeting, they couldn't run a bath.

A part time coach this side isn't good enough but at least he gets to see the players week in week out.

With the majority of England's "star players" playing in the NRL, could this be a stroke of genius from the RFL? Who better than an NRL assistant coach to give the low down on our own NRL players and our opposition's NRL players?

So while he is keeping an eye on the so called 'star players' the majority of any future squad will be meandering on in the UK doing their own thing.
That means he will have an assistant in the UK to do the job for him on this side of the pond, either that or the RL will have to invest in one of those 'beam me up Stevie' machines so that he could be in two places at once.
The problem is the RL may already be looking on ebay to see if such a machine exists.