: Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:42 am  

redeverready wrote:

I take it you mean Sam Burgess only stopped at the club because of McNamara. I find that utter nonsense but how long do you think he'll want to stop in a failing side I'd guess at not long.

If McNamara was ever to leave Bradford Sam would retire from the game.

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:55 am  

I have supported SM recently. Last year was a poor season and we needed to make up for that this season.

The reason that we still go into most games as favourites is because we have some good talent in the squad. But we just dont do it on the field.

However SM has now been given sufficient time and we need to be producing the goods this season.

Could another coach bring more out of the current crop of players. I think they probably could. Sick of underachievement, got to be one of the most frustrating things in sport aswell as life generally.

My patience is wearing very thin, i am willing to give the bloke a few more games but if there is not a vast improvement soon I will want him gone.

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:21 pm  

mystic eddie wrote:

If he was a top coach coaching a team at the top maybe they would have signed for Bradford? Fair enough, it is not his fault that the Bird deal did not come off but he must have have an "inkling" that it might not go through for reasons previously discussed on here?

However, instead of trying to defend him by stating the couple of half decent names he failed to sign, how about you comment on some of these names and judge him on what he has actually brought to the club? I will even list them so that all you have to do is give your opinion....

Platt -
Sykes -
Nero -
Tupou -
McAvoy -
Tadulala -
Sheriffe -
Finnigan -
Evans -
Godwin -
Solomona -
Worrincy -
Jeffries -
Morrison -
Menzies -
Scruton -
Feather -


Admittedly some of them have not played too much yet but there is plenty there to get your teeth into.

Some good (notably Morrison, Scruton and Sykes) but mostly poor (notably McAvoy, Platt and Jeffries) but for me the worst decision is the release of Ryan Atkins. To see a player represent another team, look good but then disappoint when you sign him may on occasions be forgiveable. To have a quality player in your squad, work closely with him and then release him is terrible.

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:49 pm  

It's not his signings that have been the major problem to me. He took over as coach during a period where we couldn't buy the kinds of players other clubs were, hence why we saw the likes of McAvoy coming into the club, who acquited himself as well as he could during that year he was at Bradford.

There are a few good signings smuttered amongst the list, but like I said, to me that's not the concern.

The main worry is how we look on the field, which to sum up in a word would be "lost". Our conditioning also looks a concern, I know you might get the odd knock, but in the opening two games we've had four players going off the field with knocks IIRC (Solomona & Langley, Deacon & Burgess). I raised this concern last year before Cardiff, when we lost both half-backs to the same injury (hamstring).

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:52 pm  

Block5Bull wrote:

Some good (notably Morrison, Scruton and Sykes) but mostly poor (notably McAvoy, Platt and Jeffries) but for me the worst decision is the release of Ryan Atkins. To see a player represent another team, look good but then disappoint when you sign him may on occasions be forgiveable. To have a quality player in your squad, work closely with him and then release him is terrible.

Is that really the worst decision?

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:24 pm  

ex Bull Dog wrote:

Is that really the worst decision?

I suppose it does look a little odd to say that in the same post as referencing the signing of McAvoy!

It might not be the single worst but I think that my point stands about recognising talent within the squad.

: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:31 pm  

This is getting circular and repetitive very quickly - let's try and fix that.

Results

2008 was the worst season the club's had since 1998, no doubt. But it was not the catastrophe some make out. The club won more than half its games and did not fall outside the play-off zone as Wigan and Hull have done fairly of late. It's a situation I'd like to see improved, but not an unacceptable one that demands immediate action.

Looking at this season, it seems bizarre to me that results like drawing with Hull KR and getting pipped by Huddersfield are 'unacceptable' when they are superior to those that last season's second and thrd placed teams attained against the same opposition.

Recruitment

This is what Bradford's success was built on, but it's had the squeeze put on it by external factors

• other clubs' getting their act together (no one's letting any Jimmy Loweses go any more and plenty of others are in the market for anyone half-decent that comes available);
• lack of funds at the club;
• the drop off in youth development (Burgess and the rest vs Leon, JP, Fielden as was, Deacon) leaving more spots to be filled by outside bodies, if not youngsters who previously would not have got into the Bulls frst team squad.

Add that all together and it's unsurprising that McNamara's buys have had a lower success rate than Noble, Elliott and Smith's.

The McNamara regime is doing something to counter this problem long-term by increasing focus on youth development, building links with Cumbria etc. In the short term the team has been left unbalanced by the failure to secure Mogg, Shenton and Bird, but given that Leeds and Saints also failed to pick up a decent centre this off-season, I can't see how McNamara can be held responsible for failing to magic up players who just aren't avalable to sign.

Tactics/Coaching

Here I'm on shaky ground, rarely seeing games. But results do not bear out the idea that McNamara is clueless. The club's results during his tenure have been at least the equal of every other club in the league with the two obvious exceptions.

He is young and inexperienced relative to some. But then we knew that when we gave him the job. In fact that was part of his attraction - we give him a go and as a result save money relative to what a seasoned coach from outside the club would demand. He gains experience on the job, gows into the role and owes loyalty the club for giving him that chance. Odd to see many of the same posters who decry the jettisoning of young players in favour of those brought in from outside demanding the same course of action taken regarding the coach.

At the moment, the impact of his coaching is limited by the players available to him. I suspect his coaching would look a hell of a lot better with Bird in place of Ben Jeffries, but recent developments make that a moot point.

Conclusion

ME and others talk about McNamara failing to fix 'the problems' as though they're one of the women off Last of the Summer Wine and Steve Mac is their feckless husband who hasn't got round to putting those shelves up because he's too busy rolling down a hill in a bath. The problem is that 'the problems' (the short-term ones) are ever-changing. Every club in Super League is trying to better themselves as if their lives depend on it because their lives do depend on it. Hull KR and Huddersfield were never going to lie down, and denying them any agency in Bradford' s two (two!) results this season is unfair. This a zero-sum game and we're running hard just to stand still.

Bradford with their B license have a bit of breathing room but not so much that they can afford to gamble by ripping up their long-term plan for recovery when it's less than halfway through. A new coach could do better long-term than McNamara, but I see no evidence that there is any such person willing to make a long-term commitment to the club, to work his days off travelling to meet players, to build with the long term future of the club in mind rather getting to a final or two in the next couple of years. And I fear that a more likely consequence would be a break-up of the McNamara project, little to no improvement on the field in the short-to-medium term and a further decline in the long-term. Yes, there are league positions below fifth.

Have I said long-term enough? Hope so, because someone had to.

: Mon Mar 02, 2009 6:50 am  

af wrote:

A lot of positive spin that is not convincing anywhere near enough people.

You talk about repetitve? You are right because you still keep harping on about his failure to sign Mogg, Shenton and Bird not being his fault. THAT IS AS MAY BE (even if I did actually take comfort in the point) but the fact still remains that there is little signs whatsoever that improvement is getting made anywhere on the pitch which, despite his long arduous treks to Cumbria, is ultimately where he will be judged.

In fact, I could even suggest that he spent less time in the car and more on the training pitch addressing our obvious problems but you would no doubt find some other way to make an excuse for him.

Finally, I agree that it is not unsurprising that his signings have had less of a success rate than that of his predecessors. That is because, ultimately, not many of them have been very good. Again, it is ok that you can go on about the failure to land players and his wonderful youth policy but this is somewhat contradicted by the fact that young Halley has never been given the chance behind the mighty McAvoy and now Sheriffe/Platt and whilst he is scoring tries for fun at Wakefield, we are scoring not a lot.

: Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:58 am  

mystic eddie wrote: You ................. a lot. Dang!l All I can see and hear when I try to read your posts now, thanks to AF, is this!:lol:

mystic eddie wrote: You ................. a lot. Dang!l All I can see and hear when I try to read your posts now, thanks to AF, is this!:lol:

: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:06 pm  

mystic eddie wrote:

You talk about repetitve? You are right because you still keep harping on about his failure to sign Mogg, Shenton and Bird not being his fault. THAT IS AS MAY BE (even if I did actually take comfort in the point) but the fact still remains that there is little signs whatsoever that improvement is getting made anywhere on the pitch which, despite his long arduous treks to Cumbria, is ultimately where he will be judged.

In fact, I could even suggest that he spent less time in the car and more on the training pitch addressing our obvious problems but you would no doubt find some other way to make an excuse for him.

Finally, I agree that it is not unsurprising that his signings have had less of a success rate than that of his predecessors. That is because, ultimately, not many of them have been very good. Again, it is ok that you can go on about the failure to land players and his wonderful youth policy but this is somewhat contradicted by the fact that young Halley has never been given the chance behind the mighty McAvoy and now Sheriffe/Platt and whilst he is scoring tries for fun at Wakefield, we are scoring not a lot.

Halley's had his chances, you're rewriting history there. If he was a McNamara signing I have no doubt you'd be decrying him as another that is not good enough.

I think we've established now that you refuse to consider context, refuse to look beyond results in the short term, refuse to consider the fact that the two clubs that have kept a settled squad supplimented by quality academy products (oh, and one Man of Steel shortlister a piece courtesy of us) have been head and shoulders above all the rest during McNamara's reign. No one's got closer than we did in 2007 and no one's particularly more consistent. People still gnash their teeth over our play-off exit to Wigan by a single point that year - Catalans followed up their third place finish by conceding fifty to them. People are quoting Cas and Quins as examples of what can be done, but did you check their boards last year? There were the exact same moans as on here about how clueless the players, the same mistakes made over and over again...

It boils down to this. It's not as bad as you make out, and there is no short-cut to success in any case (Bird could have been it, but sh.t happens). We're not particularly well off, we're no longer particuarly well supported, I'm hoping that Hood et al show particularly large balls, face down the mob and see the plan through. That's the only realistic way I can see Bradford becoming exceptional again.