You started it

You see, I'm not sure the 2003 side did get stronger as the season went on. In fact, I thought ultimately they just ran out of steam at the business end.

Anyway, I have a couple of observations on Powell:

1) The club owes him a great debt for developing the golden generation. I think he did it well, and built some very good foundations.

2) I still believe we ruined a perfectly good coach in the making by chucking him in at the deep end too soon. He wasn't ready to be a Super League head coach, and it ultimately dented his reputation. Which I don't think has ever recovered. Which is a shame.

Just as there's no evidence Powell would have coached the team to the title in 2004.

Here's what there is evidence of.

As a SL coach Smith has coached teams to trophies. Lots of them. Powell hasn't.

The rest is just opinions.

Whaaaat?
I'm not denying that Smith may be the better coach of the two, but Powell inherited an absolute shower of a team in 2001 and in 2 and a half seasons put together a team that was very unlucky not to win the challenge cup and one that was very unlucky not to at least reach the grand final. Add to that team Marcus Bai (for Cummins!!!!) and then Ali Lauitiiti as a mid season booster, plus the maturation of McGuire, Burrow, Chev, Calderwood, Diskin, JJB, Bailey, Mathers and Sir Kev, and you're categorically stating we would not have won that title under Powell. The players grew as a result of those failures, it's obviously impossible to tell whether we would have won anything or crashed and burned, but I think people on this board are extremely harsh on Powell, who himself was a young coach growing into the role.

A spot on assessment.

Don't understand why certain posters, are so it's either "black" or "white". Grey is also a colour, and with many shades.

It just seems that in order to get a point across about how good Smith is, it has to be at the expense of the man who contributed so much to that team. And because 2004 was better than 2003, the 2003 turnaround is completely lost in the memory.

Come on man, look at the massive improvement made under smith in every facet of play. It took that level of improvement to elicit a close hard thought win in the grand final. It's not like they won with something to spare and you can say, oh with powell in charge it'd have just been closer.

In my opinion no way would powell have won the grand final. He'd have got them there but it took a tremendous improvement in mental toughness and concentration to win the grand final and powell couldn't produce it.

They'd have lost the 2004 grand final to bradford with powell in charge IMO.

I'm not sure he's saying that Powell wouldn't have won in 2004, just that Smith would have in 2003. Its all speculation anyway, and no-one can really win this discussion

I absolutely agree that Powell was very under-rated and did a good job after getting thrown in after the "Lance Fiasco".
I also thought we played some great RL under Powell and he built the foundations of a team ready to succeed but on the other side of that opinion TS brought us an extra dimension and put the icing on the cake that Powell built.
I'd be happy for Powell to return and his work at Fev shows imo he's a decent coach who can build teams with a good mix of youth and experience capable of playing good RL.
I also think TS is the best coach in the SL but his time at Leeds had run it's course but 2 titles a hub-cap and a WCC thrown in with a couple more finals cemented his legendry status at our club.
I also think after recent success we are now at the other end of the coaching spectrum with a Head man out of his depth and still unsure how best to utilise his squad and i've no doubts if we had TS OR Powell we'd of won the CC this year and 4th would of been ours maybe 3rd.

Lance fiasco?

Dean lance took an ageing over the hill team and took them to a CC final as well as a cub record winning run.

Things petered out (as they did in 1999 at the end) and by 2001 the team really was over the hill and decimated by injury, so lance get's the boot.

Had they kept lance, he'd have no option but to have blooded our exceptional youngsters and history would probably have a completly different view of events.