Talk about signings hit and miss
All Hodgsons signings have been a miss
Not one signing has improved the team

Not sure it helps either when our conditioning head and Physio are running their own businesses at the same time.
Taylor the same.I know he has had injuries but done nothing now for three seasons
Dont know if any of the other players have outside business but wouldnt surprise me if Gale has

As much as Taylor is doing my nut in, I don't think you can criticise him for looking after himself once his rugby career is over. These guys ain't footballers.

20 years ago nearly with loads of money and a golden generation emerging. What Radford did at Hull is more impressive, in many ways. You can chuck in Smith’s time at Wire and the scales are still not far off balanced.

After 25+ years of SL how do we define success and failure? I’d say there is a huge, possibly now unbridgeable, gulf between how it is defined by small number of top SL clubs and the rest. 10 years ago, I could convince myself that if another club got this or that just right they could maybe join the elite or displace one of them. Now, it feels really unlikely. We’re left hoping for a Leicester City 15-16, one amazing year, scenario. It’s by no means unique to SL - all the big football leagues in Europe have massive issues with competitive imbalance. But it’s understood and acknowledged. In RL people don’t seem to have come to terms with it and spout all sorts of (imo) rubbish about the salary cap or bringing through kids to keep it a strange mystery.

Let's be honest, that Leeds squad massively underachieved before Smith arrived this season.

Same with Holbrook at Saints and McGuire at Wigan.

We've got an average squad when everyone is fit nevermind one with half of it missing.

You might have an average squad but the coach is getting a below average performance from them. You cannot blame present injuries for the performance over nearly two seasons.,

I had us in the top 6 this season if we stayed fit and a few things went out way. We're where I thought we'd be this season. Same with 2021. I thought we'd make more of a fist of it again in 2020, but we just scraped the play offs.

Pretty much the same thing happened in 2019 and 2018.

A pattern has developed here..... We're a mid table team and have been for a while. A lot of the players from 2018/19 are still here when the rot/complacency started.

Is the coach perfect? No, but sticking a Woolfe or Holbrook here with the squad and injuries we've had I bet we'd get similar results.

Holbrook took a mid table team under Cunningham and got them to within a minute of a Grand Final in his first season. Woolf has dealt with 7/8/9 injuries all year this year and is still demanding the same results as previous years. Away from Saints, you can see the impact Smith has had at Leeds.

Don’t underestimate the impact a coach can have. Even things like injuries can be influenced through training methods, and even things like morale and motivation can impact certain types of injuries.

That’s not to say new coaches are a silver bullet - management need to understand the playing group they have, and how they respond to different coaching techniques. That’s the difference between Saints appointing Holbrook compared to Warrington appointing Powell for example

Difference is those Saints teams are a just a smidge better than Hulls. Those Saints teams were/are littered with internationals.

For me, Our problems run deeper than the coach. Too much player power. The senior players have downed tools under 3 coaches now.

It wasn’t a team of internationals when Cunningham was here. Our 2017 squad only had 3 non fed players to start the year, in Ryan Morgan (the new Jamie Lyon according to KC) Luke Douglas and Dom Peyroux. We had an older generation (Lomax, Makinson, Wilkin, Roby, LMS) who were mostly considered done, and associated with the “5 in a row” legacy of failure, the new generation had promised so much in 2014 but seemingly petered out by 2016, with Swift, Richards (the best of the bunch according to our fans) Percival and Thompson all faltering the previous year. Add in the luminaries Matty Smith, Tommy Lee and Jack Owens, it was [ihighly[/i expected that when Holbrook came in that there was going to be a Warrington style clear out needed to get them back to be competitive. That isn’t what transpired (thankfully) but we certainly weren’t seen as in a good position prior to Holbrook joining.

Alternately, we had 0 players in the 2016 dream team.

Only sense I can make of all this is Pearson has given the okay to write this season off knowing we’re safe and certain players know they’re going. Hodgson has got a lot wrong but to his credit we seem to be making the right sort of signings.

Like others have said, we need a much bigger back room. We’re well behind the rest of the league on conditioning.

Maybe I underestimated the 2017 squad, but the point is, you can still argue it underachieved under KC. Roby, Walmsley, Lomax, Wilkin, Makinson. Good players then, good players now.

The quality was always there.

Are Saints the only team to have made the play offs every season? Some pedigree.

I'd rather us stick with BH until next season, if he's allowed to clear out more of the squad. Maybe I'm mad, put I'm convinced the players would throw a new guy under the bus. We've crashed since probably 2015. Why would this playing group do any different for another coach?

I bet if you look back from at least 2018 we'll have had the most 30/40 point defeats. A chunk of that 2018 squad is still here.

FWIW I think Woolf is probably the best coach SL has seen. He edges out Daniel Anderson for me.

Now there’s some differences in norms and expectations.



To save anybody else checking back, Saints finished 4th in 2016, with 20 wins and 10 losses, 3 points behind LLS winners Warrington who beat them 18-10 in the play-off semi-finals.

I don’t doubt that it genuinely felt like hard times and that 5 grand final losses in a row was really painful - always the bridesmaid, and all that. Although they did win the CC twice in the same period, to complete a threepeat.

But as fans we’re talking across an ocean of mutual incomprehension at this point. Maybe we could ask a middle-aged Bradford fan to translate.

It'll be interesting to see the squad rotation for the second set of compressed fixtures next weekend... Houghton can't do 80 minutes Thursday and 80 minutes Sunday....can he?

At the point of Holbrook taking over, we were on 5 wins, 7 losses and a draw. We were knocked out of the Challenge Cup with a 50 point thrashing. We took action before we missed out on the playoffs, and I have no doubt we would have if we hadn’t have removed Cunningham. (In fact I was so confident of that, I was flying out on my Honeymoon when we played Castleford on the semi final).

Maybe the expectations are different, but the impact is the same. As the post above states, we were underperforming and were effectively worse than the sum of our parts. But this is why I say that it’s not just a silver bullet = new age. Saints recognised that they had the playing group but not the right mentality (players were scared to make a mistake under Cunningham, there are reports Greenwood left with a bullying allegation, same with Savelio etc). The right coach was going to be the one who put a smile back on the players faces; which Holbrook was the perfect man for. Similarly you could argue that as a club we still under achieved during the Holbrook era (bombing the treble in 2019 with the Hicksgate at Wembley, not even making the final in 201icon_cool.gif and needed steel and grit added; which is exactly how you would describe Woolf.

If Hull don’t think they have the playing group to be challenging, then sure what you need from a coach changes (I totally accept Saints have always been about putting the jigsaw together, not questioning if all the pieces are there). But this is what comes down to the management at the club. Answering that question honestly, then identifying the right coach to fit to the playing group. Whether the Warrington experiment works or not, you can’t help but admire the Warrington board backing Powell to the hilt.

Thanks for your posts..
I would like to ask, " How long was it, before you saw a visual change in Saints style of play, after Holbrook took over??"
For mine, the difference is Saints have Mike Rush, who can recognise an Assistant coach, who has the attributes to become a successful Manager, eg. Leadership,Man Management, etc etc.
we don't....
We had a mass clear out of players when Radford took over from Gentle, we were still inconsistent in the League..
When a Manager, states players mindset are wrong, or their attitude is wrong, that means he can't fix the problem.., clearly he is not capable of being a Manager.so the excuse, is get rid of the players .
i don't doubt BH is a good coach, but as a Manager?? . I heard him interviewed on the radio, doesn't appear to have decent communication skills,in fact he reminds me of Peter Walsh...
Let's see what happens on Friday...

https://pca.st/episode/fa4838d6-ca71-49 ... 175683815f Interesting podcast with Nathan Brown around coaching/supporting a coach.

https://pca.st/episode/fa4838d6-ca71-49 ... 175683815f Interesting podcast with Nathan Brown around coaching/supporting a coach.

Can he? Nope
Will he? Yup

13-May-2017 - Saints 10 - 53 Castleford (coach was Long at this point, with Cunningham sacked 6 weeks prior)
20-May-2017 - Saints 45 - 0 Hull FC (Holbrook wasnt technically coach at this point, but had arrived and was at the game)

It really was that quick - we then beat Wigan the following week. We continued to wobble throughout the rest of the year, but it was almost a veil had been lifted off some of the players from the moment he stepped in the room. We still had some deadwood which needed clearing out - Ryan Morgan randomly taking out a Castleford player on the last play of the game effectively lost us the semi (and I am utterly convinced we would have gone on and won it if that hadn't have happened), Matty Smith vs Danny Richardson was probably Holbrooks biggest problem during that first year. 2018 was a year which promised so much, and Barba was completely unplayable until he had his head turned, and then it all went south from there. The big problem moving into 2019 was the chokers tag came back after such a disappointing end to 2018. This was compounded with the Challenge Cup Final which was a complete mess. In a lot of ways, we were very lucky to play Salford in the Grand Final, as they were as nervous as we were, but we ultimately got over the line and the monkey off our back.

The club wanted to jump on the back of that, and "steel" and "resilient" became the buzzwords for the coach replacing Holbrook. Again, in some ways Woolf got lucky in that as a club we put [ieverything[/i into the WCC against Roosters, and came up short with a couple of bounces of the ball/ dodgy video ref decisions. We were really flagging and fans were getting on the teams back ... and then Covid happened. It completely reset us, and we never looked back as soon as Rugby came back.

Mike Rush is a bit of a funny one - hes had almost every role in the club at one point or another, and still heavily involved in our youth development. He has absolutely seems to have nailed coaching and recruitment appointments at the moment, but he is also the person who signed Cunningham as coach and Matty Smith so the fans have never quite forgiven him!

Judging by the chain of events at St Helens, there was a pretty quick change of atmosphere, and a visual change in playing style..
Some posters are stating , Hodgson needs more time,to put his stamp on this team, well if there is no visible change in 2 years, when will there be???
As I have stated previously, listening to him, is hardly inspirational, so if it's hardly inspiring to Joe Bloggs, What's it like for a player?

Some posters can see no wrong in anything the club does but you are correct about Hodgson, seems to be way out of his depth after 2 years in charge.
The signing of an average Utility player Sutcliffe on a three year deal who is expected to be a starting centre has done it for me especially when we have at last seen the limitations of Griffin yet several on here think its a good signing.
The lack of reaction from Pearson to the latest drubbing is ominous.
I think he has thrown in the towel knowing he has made another coaching blunder

Great analogies regarding coaches impact, as Rohan Smith is seemingly bringing the very best out of Leeds, with almost immediate effect, it reminded me of the transformation Brian Smith had on us at the wonderful Boulevard, although I’m not sure of the exact stats, I believe Brian lost half a dozen games at the beginning, before we morphed into a top of the table team, if someone has Bri Smiths stats it would be interesting. He was carried round the Boulevard in adulation after his final game.

What a coach he was, one of the best I've ever seen. In that 1989 campaign (his first season) we lost the first 4 of our Division one games , He just told us to hold the line and they would come good and they certainly did. We won 7 of our last 9 that year and peaked just at the right time. the seasons average was won 22 lost 11. next season we won 21 lost 13 and in his final (part) year we won 22 and lost 12. We replaced him with Noel Cleal who was 'one of the lads' and who commanded little respect from some senior players, although the ghost of Brian Smith carried us through the rest of that third season and we won the Premiership. After that we had to sell a couple of players but under Cleal we lost heart and passion and slumped to almost going out of business.

That first year of BS we went from squeaking away from relegation in the previous season to the Premiership final in one year and with mostly the players who had performed so badly for Len Casey the year before. He was such a passionate guy and he instilled that into his wards we were a real gutsy team who no one wanted to play by the end of the campaign. Brian was always on the field with the players to thank the fans at the end of every game. Every player ran themselves into the ground for him How things are different now.

Excellent Wilf, what a coach, he just had it, you either have it or you haven’t.

Just corrected and added more detail.