Jimmy is not the man for the job, how can he be really. If i remember correctly, in the T&A Mark G said that "unless Jimmy resigns he is staying" interpretations I know but If I had faith in a coach I certainly would not quote anything like that.
To congratulate him on the MPG target is woeful. Leigh imploded and the standard of players we have are better quality than other teams in the championship.
We went through a season with the unknown so it was worth seeing it through, next season, unless you like watching teams getting annihilated, is going to be a trudge and considering the players Leigh have picked up (Which are games I might go watch) may not be happy outcomes.
The rather generic narrative "that we will learn lessons" is insulting to fans who know better.
As for good coaching look at Halifax and how they performed. Beat us twice and even at Blackpool gave us a game. Swop....
All that mattered WAS the MPG. But here I am, stuck in the middle of you to the left of me, mystic eddie to the right, to him it was just a one-game season and nothing else but promotion mattered, to you we had to win every game in style.
The truth is in between. We needed to start steadily, and build to peak at the business end. That is true for all teams in such a league setup, and it is even more true for a scratch side who half of them didn't even know each other's names.
I have no clue how Lowes "decision making" could have in any way demonstrated what happened in the MPG but seeing as you clearly did see what was going to happen, can you just link to where you posted it? Or did you keep it to yourself?
Stop missing the point. a) I don't maintain Lowes was perfect or never blundered, just that he achieved the specific achievable goal, being in the MPG. b) You must realise that had Wakey not been severely disrupted then they would have stuffed us, like they did earlier in the Super 8s when Smith could have famously played in a dinner jacket. And I don't mean promotion is "impossible", like tigertot buying a round, I say there is no chance unless a SL team has a meltdown. Which, as a Bradford fan, I would hardly hold "impossible".
That isn't mine or Mystic's position but nevermind.
On the basis that a SL club did meltdown on the single occassion the format has been in effect, promotion clearly was possible and we must judge his efforts in that context. Getting to MPG is a purely arbitrary benchmark which as we know, confers nothing. Why or how would this be a measure of success?
I haven't time to trawl posts but Bulliac, Bullseye and plenty of others will I'm sure confirm what you already know - that I and plenty of others stated repeatedly (Mat said it in pre-season) that we needed a scrum half and that the single hooker idea was ill fated. From HKR on this was a priority upon which our season hung. Instead we signed almost every other position excpet the ones we needed. You said it didn't matter that we struggled to get out of our own half against Workington as the season was about the middle 8's and then later, the MPG.
Pretty much everyone on our board cannot understand the Lauaki/Tahrouie situation and that includes people who agree with you.
That isn't mine or Mystic's position but nevermind.
On the basis that a SL club did meltdown on the single occassion the format has been in effect, promotion clearly was possible and we must judge his efforts in that context. Getting to MPG is a purely arbitrary benchmark which as we know, confers nothing. Why or how would this be a measure of success?
I haven't time to trawl posts but Bulliac, Bullseye and plenty of others will I'm sure confirm what you already know - that I and plenty of others stated repeatedly (Mat said it in pre-season) that we needed a scrum half and that the single hooker idea was ill fated. From HKR on this was a priority upon which our season hung. Instead we signed almost every other position excpet the ones we needed. You said it didn't matter that we struggled to get out of our own half against Workington as the season was about the middle 8's and then later, the MPG.
Pretty much everyone on our board cannot understand the Lauaki/Tahrouie situation and that includes people who agree with you.
I of course have been agreeing we need a scrum half all year long too. The only thing I will say is we would have had GOB, and I don't know who else came available when that fell through. Don't recall anyone being signed that we would have had a chance of. Getting rid of our young halfback was odd. But yes, the lack of a 7 has cost us dear.
I am not at all sure that Jimmy is the one who does the signings, though. Many think it is down to Ferres. Regardless, there has been a failure to cover halfback. Maybe it is partly or even wholly Lowes. I don't know. I would go so far as to say if we had had a decent and settled halfback pairing all year then we would have been twice as good come the sharp end.
I liked Tahroui, and I don't get Lauaki either. All this I have said.
But ATEOTD the season was about first getting to the MPG and then if possible of course winning it. I blame Lowes for not winning that game but he did get us there however much you disagree with his selection policy. And the reason we lost that game was nothing to do with what had gone before. In fact, if he'd changed the MPG team around less, maybe it would have done more. But if Lowes was to be judged by the MPG then the fact you have to accept is that if Addy had kicked 2 goals instead of missing then we would now be in SL.
What would you be saying about Lowes then? It wouldn't reomve all his shortcomings, but let's face it, it would still not have been a bad effort by him all in all, and he didn't miss the kicks. And they were ultimately the difference.
Perversely, I agree with you. In fact I think the margins over a whole season may have been even slighter than you suggest. Had we signed Sammut and Scott Moore...... BUT he didn't. And more than that he appeared to set his face against any evidence. His behaviour in press conferences in response to perfectly reasonable, and in my view adroit, observations from Ross was chilish and recalcitrant. He put his own stroppy, fragile self before the progress of the club.
Well today's t&a article makes for pretty depressing reading. Rather than enticing us to renew our season tickets with positive news, Ferres appears to be adopting scare tactics instead. And if we really do need 5000 season tickets just to break even then we are fecked, because there is no way in hell we are reaching that number. I will be gobsmacked if we even match last year's total, never mind surpass it.
Well today's t&a article makes for pretty depressing reading. Rather than enticing us to renew our season tickets with positive news, Ferres appears to be adopting scare tactics instead. And if we really do need 5000 season tickets just to break even then we are fecked, because there is no way in hell we are reaching that number. I will be gobsmacked if we even match last year's total, never mind surpass it.
Reality bites. What are you promising next season Steve that's going to be any different to this year? Mediocrity with the odd bright spot?
Well today's t&a article makes for pretty depressing reading. Rather than enticing us to renew our season tickets with positive news, Ferres appears to be adopting scare tactics instead. And if we really do need 5000 season tickets just to break even then we are fecked, because there is no way in hell we are reaching that number. I will be gobsmacked if we even match last year's total, never mind surpass it.
I thought the same. Very depressing piece, to be honest
The basic thrust of it seems to be
a) we need even more memberships to be sold than this year
b) we are going for promotion next year, but savings will need to be made
c) we were always going to be full time for 2016, but there's no guarantees beyond that if we don't go up next year
Well, my view is that we're going to get nowhere near the number of memberships for 2016 that we got for this year, as the 'novelty' factor has now worn off and we are facing another season down in the Championship. So it looks like we'll see cost cutting in various ways throughout the season, all of which makes it less likely that we'll be able to make a serious challenge in next years Super 8s.
It can't have escaped attention that almost the whole squad are on contracts that run out at the end of 2016, which means that if we don't go up next year, there can be a total clear out and a completely new part-time squad assembled for 2017
I don't think we'll go part time in 2017, but I fully expect anyone who is half decent to leave (or at least sound out their options) and the quality of our squad will drop off as we spend only what we can afford.
This is exactly what we all said would happen when we were originally relegated. Unfortunately it is a vicious circle of declining season ticket sales, affecting overall performance, which then in turn knocks the season ticket sales down further, and so on.
Our core fanbase might just be enough to ensure we never need to go part time, but I give us one, maybe two more years in this league to remain competitive in the 8s before we drop off and find ourselves just making up the numbers.
An article which leaves little illusions about the one-shot or bust nature of last year.
We will mount an ever fading challenge until the leagues are reformatted again. The RFL can perhaps just about cope with our fading relevance in the annual fauxmotion farce, but what if Beaumont eventually has to pull back on funding Leigh too. Only then with absolute beltings going on in the Middle 8s will anything be done to rectify the situation.
This is a serious question. We know we cannot be promoted, and the coaches and staff know we cannot be promoted so why are we staying full time? What benefit is it to us to furnish the RFL with a quasi-realistic championship? In a bloody-minded sort of a way wouldn't you relish it if we'd followed up on Lowes' rant by announcing that yes, it is not possible to be promoted under this system and we are therefore going part-time.
I just hope to god that Fax etc concentrate on building sustainably and don't ever try and splash scarce cash to participate in this silliness.