He gave some young players a chance in SL. That was the biggest improvement over his predecessor. It's help set the club on the right path in terms of youth development and the future. Maybe that doesn't count for much in your view but it should. Well done for getting the word 'fellating' in your post though - it really enhanced its overall quality.

I don't think anyone is claiming that Gentle has revolutionized FC and made us a grand final winning team, but some acknowledgement has to be given for the chances that have been brought about that allow the club to begin to function as a top level professional team.

In my view were he went wrong simply comes down to placing to much trust in the players. Both in lifestyle and on the pitch he expected the players to behave and have the intelligence to adopt his methods and tactics. His biggest regret for me must be trying to adopt different attacking structures for different teams. It may work when you have Benji Marshall or the Australian team who are capable and have the intelligence to carry it out, but it is clear that FC don't have that ability. Its no surprise that Radford consistently talks about treating them like kids to get the best out of them.

And that is the best summation of the Gentle era

Very little difference between Pete and Rich's game win ratio.
The disappointment comes from the fact that many were convinced the revolution was imminent.
We were so poor at times last season that it was shake your head material.

Well just in matters of fact:

Our average finishing league position (6th both seasons, compared to 11th (of 12), 12th, 6th, and 8th under Agar).
Our points returns (only one of Agar's four seasons did any better than Gentle's lowest return).
Number of playoff wins (Gentle 2 from 4 and no season without getting to the 2nd round of playoffs, Agar a big fat 0 from 2 attempts).
Number of knockout wins against SL opposition (Gentle 5 from 9, Agar 2 from 8, including that staggering run of 0 from 6).

Then there's the number of youngsters brought through as already mentioned.



One does not guarantee the other. I'd say that we definitely did improve, but arguably not by enough.



Agar was also a halfback, and we had even less idea in attack.



I wouldn't claim to know how much truth is in these rumours (which seem to have gathered more support since Gentle's departure, as is to be expected).



I don't see anyone 'fellating' Gentle, just some thinking he was a decent coach and bloke, and recognising the good he did for us.

Your claim that we did better under Agar is just absolute nonsense. I'm dying to hear how you can back that up.

I've just had a quick look:

League games - Gentle 51.9%, Agar 45.7%
League + Playoffs - Gentle 51.7%, Agar 44.8%
All competitons - Gentle 54%, Agar 42.3%

That's clear improvement IMO, there's just not a case to be made that we did better under Agar as far as I can see.

I've never said we weren't better or worse.
What does a 5% improvement in league games (yardstick) equate too in real terms?
One more victory in a season?
I would agree with your assessment that the marginal improvement wasn't adequate enough for the pomp and circumstance the new regime attempted to herald in.

Look on the bright side, next year could be worse.

Good luck to PG.

For me PG seems to have done a pretty good job overall in terms of the changes he made to the structure of the club.

Gentles only weakness or failing was expecting the players who he was working with to actually grasp what he was asking them to do and expecting them to have the ability to understand like the players he has coached previously at Wests.
Its becoming clear that the mentality of the players is/was part of the problem and to be honest I think thats the difference between the game in the country and Australia in that the Australians its like a second nature to them where as we tend to struggle having to play and think.

Oh, I know, that wasn't a suggestion you had. I was just expressing how ridiculous I find the claim that we were no better than we were under Agar as you brought up another statistic that shows it as false.



1 and a third, so not a lot, really. It's when you add in the knockout games that I think it shows the real picture, though. By the end under Agar we seemed to make a better job of making sure we beat those at the lower end of the table, but never really threatened those at the top, and especially not in the crunch games. With Gentle we at least showed we could challenge (and beat) the better sides at times. That's why the real disappointment for me and real area for criticism with Gentle was the talk about narrowing the gap between our best and worst performances, if anything it got wider.



I really hope not.

And not wishing to change the subject your point on mentality is summed up by our England coach with his 'chip on the shoulder' attitude.

To me I think this is something that is an issue with all English sport. Not sure why but the ability of an English athlete to be able to think for themselves and have creativity and flair is non existent. There just seems something about the English mentality at the moment that only allows it to achieve in a very regimented and structured way. Take the most successful English sports for example, cycling and rowing, they are very structured sports and seem to be run by one head figure that controls everything in the athletes lives. Even the England cricket team are successful at the moment but are getting plenty of criticism about how boring and lacking in inventive play they are. Don't get me wrong, I would rather win the ashes by any means than lose to Australia. The problem is in RL we cant even play to a rigid structure well enough to compete with Australia.

Possibly catch 22 with our game. We have taken on the rigid structures of the NRL game which they are so successful with but don't have the flair and intelligence across the park to know how and when to make a variation either on a game by game basis or during a game. The rigidity here seems to have stifled the flair players coming through and many other players can now only play by rote. Back in the day we probably played to our strengths more where if you had a big pack or fast backs that would dictate the game plan now we constantly try to mold the players we have to fit the game plan the coach wants. Maybe it works in Oz cos they've got a bigger pool to draw from?

Completely agree, when we had players like Shaun Edwards playing you always felt GB were in a game against Australia as they could create from nothing. Think it is probably a reflection of modern sport, sport science has developed to the point were coaching by numbers makes it very hard to quantify of the cuff creative brilliance. You can measure tackles made, missed tackles and average meters, but how do you measure the contribution of players like Chase when he was playing like a one man team for Cas.

No you aren't. You've decided he was crap and are going to ridiculous lengths to justify that opinion (better under Agar FFS

) so you're clearly not interested in anything resembling facts or a reasoned discussion.

I refer you to Pearsons judgement call on Gentle.

If he was any good, he'd be at training today. Possibly, he might have decided not to recall the poor players until January to get over the trauma of a longer than average season. He didn't strike me as a taskmaster.

Most peoples opinions of him was "He was a nice guy". I couldnt give a toss if he ripped the heads off Barbie dolls and peed in the hole as long as he won games against London, Salford and Widnes.

Being a nice guy means knack-all in sport, unless you want to sell crisps after your career.

Well done on managing to reaffirm Kosh's opinion of you in such a short time and so succinctly

Let's just take a look at that, shall we?



I'd draw your attention to the key word in there - progress.

Gentle was released because he hadn't made [ienough[/i progress, not because he was worse than Agar. Consistency was his downfall.

That and being undermined internally, perhaps?

I bet Pearson didn't mean that though

Utter garbage. If PROGRESS was the reason, he'd have gone before Wembley as rumoured. It was only the Daily Star that kept him in the role up to then. That's clear.

His game plans were awful.

Still not got over the Miners Strike, Grandad?

If that's the best you can manage, I'd give up now

Seems the truth about little clique's were true - Holdswoth, O'Meley and Galea keeping to themselves as per the Holdsworth HDM article. Doesnt really contiribute to a good team ethos

Smailes does spin more than a gyroscope though and as they've all departed, those are 3 easy targets.

'Radford wants a united team driven by a determination to earn the right to play for the shirt and Holdsworth didn’t fit that plan.'

Not pulling his punches there.

Best line though:

'It’s not fair to blame the new regime of Radford and Motu Tony for the sins of the father.'

I am a Staunch Hull Supporter but I agree - a very strange thing to say. I do know that O'Meley was not a popular figure with PG so we obviously had lots of cliques !!!