it's a little early to be saying Cunningham is a poor coach, it's his first year, he's an inexperienced coach. If he learns from his mistakes he'll be a good coach, if he doesn't then he'll be a poor one.

Powell was arguably worse than Cunningham at Leeds in the same position, now with more experience he's regarded like a second coming.

Great RL players would be great players in any era, regardless of weather they play the game now, or in the past. I do think the positions some players play, or played would be different because the skill set required in certain positions was very different then, and it's very different now.

As for the overall standard, I don't think the standards or skills have dropped at all. Where I think the game has changed is that players today have a lot less time on the ball, and less space to accurately execute there skills. When you look at the game from the 20th century what's noticeable is how 'broken' the defensive lines were, and how few players were involved in the tackle. Also, the likes of Andy Gregory used to crab across the field and looking for gaps, I think if he tried that so often in todays game he'd more often than not got smashed by the advancing defence. I'm not saying that he wouldn't have been a great player now, he was a very skilful player, but I do think he would have to adapt his game significantly to succeed, not to mention his lifestyle.

Personally, I love the game as much as ever. It's totally different to when I started watching it, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. Granted there's some dross served up each week, but that's ALWAYS been the case in any sport.

How Rob Burrow must wish for the return of [i[uthose[/u[/i days !!

He would have gone down in history as an even better scrum half than Andy Gregory...maybe in fact as the greatest RL player ever

I'd agree that his appointment was a mistake, he should have learned the job elsewhere for me before being given a big job, but the club probably looked at Wane making a similar step up and succeeding.

Not quite the same though. Wane had been coaching (very successfully) at U17, U20 and U23 academy level for quite a few years before he was given the assistant and then head coaches job.

First team coach is very different to coaching the youngsters though. OK he will be able to observe the first team coach in action and pick up pointers but taking the top job and the buck stops at your door plus you have a lot more ego's to deal with were as the youngsters are generally raw and 'yes sir no sir' at such a young age. Football throws up many examples were a good number 2 doesn't always make a good number 1. Brian Kidd springs to mind.