Wires71 wrote:
Yep you are right, I'm in a dream land we could never aspire to getting anyone else other than Tony Smith and certainly not a top NRL coach with a track record.
I must have also dreamt that Tim Sheens was coaching Hull KR and that he had won 4 NRL Grand Finals with 2 separate teams.
Anyway most of the blinkered on here were advocating more time for Paul Cullen when it was clear he should have gone years earlier. I suspect the same will happen again.
Tim Sheens won trophies but a long time ago, so him going to Salford / Hull KR was more a reflection of the fact he didn't have the top clubs still in for him. Similar to Brian Noble going to Salford or now Toronto or Ian Millward going to Leigh.
If we appointed Sheens, Noble or Millward we would be getting someone with history but would we see that as a positive move forward.
Back in the Cullen era, I agreed with you, we had him about 2 years too long, and he did have his loyalists that would have supported him whatever. With Cullen we were clearly slipping backwards. The peak point of his era was probably Andrew Johns debut at the HJ, from that day onwards there was a steady decline, that was punctuated by the occasional thrilling win, but we were clearly mired around the fringes of the playoffs. With TS, we actually improved over the last 12 months, compared to the year or two before. We topped the league table and reached two finals. Your argument that Smith has gone on too long is based on the fact losing those Grand Finals, plus the fact we lost a couple before. It's not like Cullen where the direction of travel is backwards, the argument about changing the coach here would be if we think something extra is needed to get us over the line in the big ones. It's like Leeds around 2004 where Daryl Powell had got rid of the old Leeds culture of big names that flatter to deceive but was losing finals and semi finals, and Gary Hetherington made a change (ie getting rid of his mate) to bring in someone he thought would bring an edge to take them to the next level, and it worked.