Smith's more recent career has been a little bit more surprising and he seems to have taken a few different turns that he planned.

- Stated that if he left Leeds, it would probably be for an NRL post, then leaves Leeds to become national coach of England.

- After saying how much he wanted to be a national coach, then claims that he misses the day to day running of a team and takes the Warrington job.

Is he more Brian Smith than Tony Smith ?

It might just be that he tells the fans what he thinks they'll want to hear.

Or, it might be that both are true.

With the first he perhaps left Leeds sooner than he'd planned and with no opportunities offered to him in the NRL as, at the time of departure his coaching career looked to be in some decline. Then with the latter I could well believe a coach getting bored - especially one as cerebral as TS.

Im not particularly bothered about his record as GB/England coach, it could have been a lot worse but I am disappointed that he's decided to quit so soon. He came on board basically saying that we need to look long term and then goes after 3 tournaments. If we'd won last night Im fairly sure he'd have stayed on.
I've lost a lot of respect for him recently.

This has been a real blow to British RL. I think the impact of RU going professional has been far greater than is appreciated.

Maybe re Welsh players but not those from England, have you seen the quality of the english 3/4 line?
Even worse than their RL counterparts.
Why do you think they wanted Lee Smith?

The RU players though were additions to what we already had. Tait, Offiah, Devereux, Gibbs, Davies, Bateman, Bentley etc all added to the general quality of backs around the competition, and all were qualified to play for GB.

However, in addition we seemed to produce the odd gem from within RL itself - Drummond, Gill, Loughlin, Newlove, Connolly, Schofield, Robinson. That production has also seemed to dry up over recent years.

I think Smith has done the right thing. What he should add - IMO - is a very strong blast to all concerned about the damage done by imports.

His replacement? Well if you want to turn the clock back 20 years you could go for a Kear or McDermott. No problem with a younger English coach as assistant. However, if you want to move forward I'd say find an NRL coach who can work with the players to improve the technical sides of their game.

Don't confuse a badly coached backline with a talentless one. Englands problems are firmly rooted in the coaching setup (I have no idea what Rob Andrew is doing, why sack Andy Robinson and then keep the muppets who have actually been coaching the players?).
Dan Hipkiss would make a superb RL player, he's strong, direct and can offload, but he's only geting a look in the England team becauase of injuries. Cueto would be a level faster than most English RL backs, he's also strong, direct and can tackle. I can think of 6-10 English backs I would love to see playing league right now, guys like Tom Varndell, who barely gets a game for Wasps but would be comfortably the fastet thing in SL.
There are plenty of league backs that started at lower Union clubs but became top class players when they switched codes.

I'm unsure what the thinking has been behind the Union signings of league players over the last few years. They have the talent in Union and a far broader player base to choose from. But in the end clubs have money to spend and they see league as just another supermarket to shop from. I think in the case of Smith, Wasps are looking to re-build (they have had a fairly large player turnover this year I think), and Smith was just a player they were interested in - I also suspect he was cheap compared to signing a big name English Union player. I suspect he's also coached to a far higher level in the basics as well.

As much as I would love to see Edwards take charge, why the hell would he want the job?

That's got me thinking. A rarity.

The new coach is going to spend very little time with the players so I'm not convinced he'll be able to have a huge impact on the technical aspects - besides which they (the players) be at an age where most of their skills development will have taken place. Maybe a coach who can get them up for big games, give them belief etc would be more use? Someone like Brian Mclennan?

Alternatively do you go for a technician but give him the brief to have an impact at a wider level - more like David Waite's role?

I think you need someone with some level of recent knowledge of SL to understand it's strengths and weaknesses.

TBH I don't really blame him for taking the wire job. If England performed as badly as they did at the WC - which could easily have happened IMO - then he may well have been sacked in any case.

What gets me is that the Leeds fekwits who didn't like Smith will now claim they were right all along.

They weren't. Smith will go down in history for his Leeds career and rightly so.

Anyone who doesnt appreciate what he did is a clown.

You are confusing his club career with his international career. This is about him as English coach, not Leeds coach.

I don't give a tuppenny e about his England coaching career Coco. I couldn't care less if he'd played 10 lost 10.

I will always be grateful to him for bringing us what had eluded us for so long.

Any Leeds 'supporter' who cannot appreciate what Smith did for Leeds needs their head reading and would probably enjoy the 80s all over again.

Emma, I don't want to get in the middle of a domestic, but what more could Smith have done as England coach? In the World Cup he lost to the the two finalists, one of which is being touted as the greatest ever Australian team and on that won the tournament. This year he lost to the same "greatest ever" Australian team and beat the current world champions!

Put the greatest coach ever in charge of this lot and he'll fail too.

I have no probs with the matches against Australia. We were beaten by a better, (and world class team). However I do have a problem with the performances against France, and the World cup last year.

Look at the experience and quality of players 1-7 and what happened was inevitable, in fact they performed above expectation at times.

However on squad selection, an experienced quality centre ie Senior (granted we don't know the full story of his offer) as well as a balanced half back pairing ie Eastmond/Tomkins with an experienced Burrow/Mcguire and sticking with it would have made some difference. I'm all for blooding youth but the back line had no chance, even if the pivots got quality ball wide Bridge and Shenton wouldn't put their wing away

losing is not the issue ricky, it's the way we lost. we were a disorganised shambles. it was embarressing

He's a Leeds legend no doubt about it but do you think that should be considered when offering opinions about his England reign??
I personally think they are 2 completely different entities and even when you consider the calibre of the players available at international level and the lack of quality backs performances have been mainly dissapointing imo.

so a 66-12 win wasn't good enough for you earlier this year? How disrespectful are you being to France? I trust you were equally disgusted with Leeds' performance against Catalans in the play-offs.

...doesn't take long for the knives to come out does it.



Sad thing is, this isn't reserved for Smith. Lose a few games over Easter and it will be our own, current players that are on the receiving end.

Worst fans in the league..... except for St Helens.

I wouldn't say the knives are out,are you not dissapointed with how TS has done at international level??
Just because fans are dissapointed at how England have done it's hardly getting the knives out imo.

No. I expected him to do naff all and I havent been disappointed.



Of course it is. Some people just love to stick the boot in on Smith. It's a shame that one of the most decorated coaches in Leeds RLFC history is so reviled by areas of the supporter base.

Gareths right about our supporters.

We could have Jack Gibson coaching us and the result would have been the same - their is simply no substitute for class.

The gulf between SL and the NRL is so wide as to be laughable if it weren't so sad. The Aussies technical ability physicality/speed and game awareness is light years ahead of our players.

Until we are able to get more of our players immersed into that culture the results will continue to be as they have in recent years.

As for Smith - I thought he did a pretty good job given the players at his disposal - this will be seen a high point after next years quad nations

Is Sheens full time? Does he get access to players several times a year? Do these lads play together for team and state? Have they played together for years and know each others games?

Do we have a part time coach. Do the players get together properly more than once a year, do many of them know each other? Do many of them know each others game?

As CM says, what is Smith to do? Clark walked out on GB because they had no internal structure and wouldn't implement one.

He selects players on form for the WC and there are cliques and the team fails to adhese. He breaks the cliques up by selecting for the future and playing young aspiring talent, spreading the places around as many teams as poss, and he's the "Tinkerman", the fact that the team put in the best hour of rugby I have seen them play in a long long time notwithstanding.

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

As CM , as for France, it was lovely to see that they have adopted the same line as those great 80's French teams, grind it out. Once they start benefiting from youth develoipment France are going to be back as test nation.

For the record, I predict the beginning of the end for the new England coach will begin with a rather patchy performance against a volcanic PNG side next year.