I know it's a little sad but last night I was talking to Robbie Farah the West Tigers and Australian hooker about Royce on Twitter. Apparantly all the West Tiger lads had s nice drinking session with him the other day to say goodbye. Benji Marshall even asked for permission to leave the NZ camp.

Robbie Farah said the players are gutted to see him go because his personality is up there with the best, very funny and sarcastic guy apparantly! It was good hearing off a top class international about our new coach, rather than a few no it all West fans.

The world certainly is getting smaller.

Its nice to hear the players have a high opinion of him, but we shouldn't get too carried away of the back of just that. The assistant coach tends to be popular with the players as he's not the one that has to make the big calls and tends to be a lot more friendly with the players than the head coach.

It is another good reference for him though, but the most important one (imo) is that he's rated by Tim Sheens.

To be fair, not many people have anything bad to say about him.

I'm not really up on the whole twitter thing, can you provide a link to this virtual chat?

Hes already Saints best ever coach in Saintsfan's eyes then

Judging by that it's a damn good job we've got no players with a personality left either



Sounds very 'mate' rather than 'manager' to me.

You're not missing much, it basically says

Ash: Reet mate, I'm a Saints fan, what's Royce like?

Farah: Good mate, going for a drink with him later.

It's not an in depth discussion

Bloody hell, you've read a lot into that

Could be a worrying factor. Benji Marshall was the footy show this year saying the same thing.

Dident Millward use to go drinking with players?

It depends on him really, he'll have to know that he'll have to take a step back from the players. There are plenty of examples of assistants who make the step up to be decent coaches, it will also help that he is having a completely fresh start rather than doing it with a club that has players coached before.

As I said, its a common thing with assistant coaches. It won't be the same when he's head coach, I'm sure.

Difficult to predict how Simmons will do, but I'd say any NRL coach or assistant coach is a level or two above anything over here. If Maguire can turn some average players into SL champions, then surely Simmons can get an extra gear out of an already good set of players?

Well maybe he could if he had some?

If Simmons can get out of our current crop of Saints players what Millward got out of his crop of Saints players then Simmons can go partying with them every night for all I care!

Agreed. Millward was brilliant for us, by far our best coach during the Super League era in my opinion, and his list of trophies backs that opinion up nicely.

He had his problems, but I would quite happily go through another 'Millward' type era.

I disagree and I would use any of his 50+ point thrashings as evidence. Anyone of our coaches, including Harry Potter would have won trophies with the players at Millwards diposal.
He had his plus points, but some pretty big flaws as well. Perhaps we would have been able to pull the odd GF out the bag, but the likelyhood of us being there would be seriously reduced imo.

We played some amazing rugby league during his tenure - which is getting great things out of his crop of players! (That was the bit I meant)

At times, but I have to raise you 70-nil at leeds. Stuff like that, and the long trip home after a pasting at odsal, still leave scars on me, I'm afraid.

Fair enough.

I suppose with Millward it was measuring that against Wide to West (since that is the other extreme to the 70-nil thrashing). It's obvious why Daniel Anderson copped all the silverware really because he took an obviously well coached attacking team consisting of some talented players and gave it steel in defence and clinical finishing, which is all that was needed to turn it into a champion team.

I suppose after the relative dourness of our play during Potter's regime (bar the natural skill and great form of Pryce and Eastmond when actually on the pitch), I'm very hungry for some great attacking moves to grace Saints' performances again. I don't want Millwardesque defence back though. In defence I just hope we are better than we were under Potter.

I'd have taken one Grand Final win from one appearance, rather than none from four appearances, any day of the week.

I'm not sure I would (and i'm not sure the club's coffers would aswell), i've had four fantasitic evenings in Manchester watching my team competing for our game's biggest prize during a period of team transition in which we had no right to be there at all, rather that than one trophy and three Bradford/Wiganesk 'building' seasons floundering mid-table, 3 summers of absolute dispear.

Royce is the man to bring back a very strong defence.

I think there's often a case of that when a coach changes, there's a period at the start of their reign were all the plus points of the former coach are still there, but often the weaknesses are addressed, giving them a real boost during their early years -
Hanley reinvigourated a stagnent McCrae built squad - Millward benifitted from the steel Hanley had put in the team and Anderson was given a team with and attacking edge. I guess in sport the real test of a coach is to do it year after year without dropping standards a la Alex ferguson. Millward and McCrae couldn't do it, Hanley was a bit too nuts and DA left for other resons.

And apparently the Tigers are an excellent attacking side, too...

Rogues you belittle your achievements in the Grand Final with these sarcastic remarks and add fuel to the theory that Wigan were just the best of a bad bunch!

Millward inherited a remarkable group of players and come the end of his reign had "improved" us to the point where we finished 4th then 5th in the table and never looked like reaching the GF, let alone winning it.

No thanks.

Kevin Iro & Paul Newlove in the centres. Jeezy Creasy.
Chris Joynt, Paul Sculthorpe, Freddie & Apollo, the quality went right through the squad.
The Bryn Hargreaves equivelent in that Squad was Sonny Nickle, which shows the difference.
We even had Vila for when the hit the fan. I remeber him having a dust up with Darren Fleary and cracking him right on the end of the nose. We when ref was discussing it with the lines men, all you could hear on the mike was Vila giving it "C'mon D'k'ed, what's up d'k'ed"
Not a squad you could get under a salary cap, though and how long we could have feasibly paid a squad with that many stars, I'm not sure.

We did also have Tommy Martyn, who's guile is sorely missed.