: Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:26 pm  

You cannot expect someone to do their job without the tools that they need to do it with.

Yes, the way Smith managed some of his "resources" at times left something to be desired, but as the state of the train-on squad demonstrated, the resources that he had to begin with were pretty sparse to say the least.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:26 pm  

Paul Thexton wrote:

Which Sinfield isn't. I honestly get embarrased at how he gets, to use a phrase I normally despise, "owned" in every tackle. He couldn't bust his way out of a wet paper bag.

Is it Sinfield's fault that the rest of British loose forwards aren't better than him? I can only imagine Westerman being good enough in the future.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:34 pm  

No but the games top administrators should, starting with Lewis.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:01 pm  

we need the BEST coach for the job regardless of nationalality. personally i'd like to see shaun edwards involved somewhere somehow, but with his commitments to the welsh rfu i cant see it happening.

as for the players. for several years our academy teams have been competing with, and on several occasions beating, the aussies and kiwis. the young aussies and kiwis are now playing first grade in the nrl where as our young players get over looked for over the hill aussies looking for a pension top up.

the sooner we cut the overseas quota down to 1 or 2 the better. our teams should be full with players that are eligable for the home countries and gb, and stop finding excuses like he has been here for years lets make an exception!!!

i would not have sent our young players to this world cup, however now is the time to start bringing them on. this current crop (haha) have proved time and again they are not upto the task of defeating the aussies/kiwis and now they shoud be binned.

rant. over!!

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:03 pm  

but smith did not .refuse too dive on the ball .drop the ball . knock on . pass forward . give penaltys away. miss 1 on 1 tackles.fail too kick when a kick was needed.fail too dictate field position .

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:07 pm  

no, but this crop of useless players did, time for a change. the coach is the one who motivates players, instills that extra bit of confidence, the person who you'd run through brick walls for. you'd be lucky to see the great majority of this england squad run through a wet sheet of paper!

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:15 pm  

Wayne Bennett couldn't turn this England side around. A no mark coach like Smith hasn't got a hope in hell of doing it.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:31 pm  

One of Smith's strengths as a SL coach was that he got Leeds playing error free rugby. That is essential at international level where errors get punished. I had hoped he would bring the same discipline to England but sadly he couldn't.

Sadly there were too many players such as Leon Pryce who have performed well in SL but simply could not cope with the additonal intensity at international level. This calls into question whether SL provides enough intensity. The differences in refereeing is an issue for me. This year in SL the players have been conditioned to move away from the tackle immediately and yet in the WC Australia and NZ and been allowed to lie on that extra couple of seconds. If we are to have a stronger world competition then this sort of thing needs to be resolved. Do we need to have more movement of referees between the countries to avoid this competition centric bias?

I am not using referees or the coach as an excuse. These are just a couple of factors. The fundamental issue is that the players are just not skillful and game wise enough.

I worry that SL is allowing far too many foreign players into the teams and this is not in the long term interest of a strong international comp. There should be no more than 3 players on any team that are not eligible for a GB team.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:32 pm  

In my view Smith has been naive to think he could take the players who excel in SL and expact them to dominate in the same way that they dominate in SL.

How were we expecting to release our spring heeled slightly built 2nd row forwards and inject Pryce into the game when the defence always has an extra 2 seconds to get organised.

We should have sorted out the pathetic refereeing policy before the tournament started, or realised that we were going to be playing to different rules and planned accordingly - not two weeks into the competiton.

He was however let down by a number of players making far too many errors when the reality was that we again handed the game to the kiwis rather than them earning it.

: Sat Nov 15, 2008 2:44 pm  

I don't normally call for the coach's head, because I've been there - albeit at a much lower level - and know much of what happens isn't his fault. But the bottom line here is we took out a well-paid, comfortably looked-after squad, and played very badly in four successive games in the World Cup. One game you can put down to bad form, but four has to be the coach's fault. Some of the errors we saw weren't just low-skill mistakes by individual players, but poor understanding of defensive positions, poor attacking plays, and poor selections (how Wellens was selected again today is beyond me). Smith has failed just as badly as his players. If I was Lewis, I'd sack him.