Interesting that Abe tweeted over the weekend that there are
only three people who oversee every recruitment and retention decision and that
these three people don’t receive half as much criticism as others. They are:


 


Simon Moran


Stuart Middleton


Mike Lomax

Your attitude proves my point in all honesty. 

Season ticket since1991…..is 35 seasons not patient enough?  If not how many more?

Now that really was a frightener. Hated it. Peta Hiku was very handy for us at the time. I think we did OK in them but that was very tough watching.
The current situation is a doddle in comparison. 

I think it could be argued that we have had several occasions of "downed tools " for quite a while. The Last Days of Smith,  and Price in 2019 when we beat Saints at Wembley ,we were rubbish before & after ,playing some poor rugby. And , it was the players  including Powell's additions that made his job impossible.

Smith, absolutely. He missed the play offs (direct equivalent) and ultimately there was no green shoot of recovery in that team. He paid for it with his job. 

Price’s ‘failure’ compared to what had come since actually doesn’t look too bad. I’m not advocating for him, and wouldn’t  want him back, but from where we were on season debrief of 2021, to where we were at debrief of 2022, proved the point really. We had tantrums about being knocked out at home against Hull Kr in the playoffs, and relied on scraping past Toulouse to remain in the top flight.


While this season hasn’t been good enough, and it’s not, we can’t judge former seasons differently because the coach got Cas to a grand final a few years ago and stopped Mike Cooper selling T-shirts. It was a failure, by every metric and almost everyone brought in during that period is now gone, Harrison and Dufty aside (Vaughan at seasons end). And that is actually really haunting, given the list includes but not limited to Minikin, Russell, Matautia, Holmes, Kasiano, Dudson, McGuire, Magoulias, Nicholson, Bullock, Drinkwater, Wardle. Add that to the players that left during that period, Hill, Cooper, Charnley, Widdop,  Hughes, Mulhearn, Davis, Clark, Dean, Longstaff… 


That’s 20+ players gone since Price left in 2022. And I’d argue the second list is a better list of players than the first, 4 of them have gone on to represent England since leaving us as scrap.