Q:so what did potter do well
A: moved to Bradford .... Lol

Ade couldn't think of anything good to say, but he did say he gave the most boring half time team talks.

KC on potter was pretty funny too

You're naughty, you. We'll get the Potter Was Wonderful brigade on here soon!

It was clear from his interview with the press pre-season that Ade wasn't unhappy to see Mr P leave these shores. I wonder if Ade has forgiven him yet for not letting him play in the last game at Knowsley Road?

KC gave a great example of a potter half time team talk, players come in winning38-0 against quins and Potters idea of motivation? He told them they were only winning because of the referee.... Awesome. It was pretty clear they didn't think much of him.

Were they asked about Royce then?

Shows how neglected the on field stuff has been. Potter clearly never wanted to be at Saints and his performance seems to have reflected that. We need a proper coach. Royce's replacement is a big appointment, they need to get it right.

If you're using Ade Gardner's personal understanding of rugby league as a barometer to assess coaching performance you're on dodgy ground lol.

Everyone, not just The Arrow from Barrow, knows that Mick Potter is the worse coach that has ever held a position in rugby league.
He never did anything for saints. Anything that was acheived was down to the players or the board, whilst anything that we fell short on was solely down to Potter's inability. Unlilke Royce, who the opposite applies to; apparently.

KC was there too. Does he know nothing as well?

I've not seen much praise for Royce. His honesty in the press at times has been good, but there hasn't been much sign that he's a coach that will improve things for us.

The recent threads appraising him didn't show a positive reaction to him either, most were suggesting his contract won't be renewed.

So, for example when a poor completion rate is mentioned, there's not a post suggesting

"Royce won't coach them to drop the ball, that's the players fault."

Mick Potter, for me, took Saints backwards in the way we played rugby and went from an entertaining team under DA to a sometimes boring and negative team to watch...we also seemed to lack the ability to put games to bed under Potter when we were in a position to win them - 2009 GF and 2010 CCSF v Leeds both good examples of this

Simmons has had a very tough first year and has not been able to field his first choice 17 at any point due to injuries, yet has still taken us to within 80 mins of Wembley and to 3rd in the table (which considering the adversities he has faced is a great achievement imo)

Will be interesting to see how we fare in the playoffs, we have been very close to Wigan 3 out of 4 games this season and should have beaten them at least twice if it wasnt for silly mistakes, so could go to the DW in playoffs and turn them over yet which would be massive for us as well as how we go next year with hopefully better luck with injuries

I think some people have been overcritical of old Royston this season and think he is doing a good job at the moment of erasing the bad work done by Potter and will eventually prove to be a very good coach for us

So to summarise

Potter (despite injuries) got us to 2nd, a CCSF and the GF in 2010 and we were the league's top scorers = going backwards.

Simmons (despite injuries) got us to 3rd and a CCSF = great achievement.

How odd.

Mick inherited a squad in decline and kept us in contention when a lot of coaches would have failed (a la Brian McD at Leeds). He didn't have the luxury that DA had in 2006 of one of the most dominant packs SL has seen, helped by the refs' instructions at the time to favour quick PTB, and commanded by Sean Long in his pomp.

IMO he had us defending much better than we do currently, especially on our line.
He could beat Wigan with imo a weaker squad than we currently have.
He also faced terrible injury problems, which had us questioning the conditioning staff, and blooded plenty of youngsters who've gone on to have SL success of varying degrees.

The rugby was dull. We relied too much on short kicks for tries as we didn't create well out wide. We were also often infruiatingly unorganised on the last tackle, which is fairly unforgivable.
He was part (along with DA and Nobby) of that Brian Smith school of coaching which revolved around having a bigger pack than anyone else and did not include a plan B.
I also think we got so used to scraping through, given the injuries he had, that we were guilty of forgetting what talented players we had and not playing enough rugby.

Did I hear someone say we were entertaining under Daniel Anderson?

Only beacuse he wore sunglasses.

For me the dip started with the mid season sacking of Milward. Sacking a coach when we are top and in the semis of the cup unforgivable. We should have won the GF and CC that year but the disruption set us back. DA steadied the team the next year but then we had the player drain start. Scully being a huge loss IMHO.

We should have kept Milward and thrn sacked at end of the year if the board really wanted rid. DA could have been tapped up without all the legal battles mid season. Fans revolt. Player splits etc. We took a successful team and took it apart. It been a slower decline than most teams ie Wigan Bradford. I feel we are at the bottom of the curve and we will make it a top three next year.

Entertained me enough:

DA was a top coach and it was obvious the played respected him and he also hada nasty streak in him. Players knew he was no mug and didn't think much of reputation.

He also was very good in terms of organising us defensively which IMO sets him above Ian millward.

DA was also tactically sound, something we've not had fir 3 years.

He may have beaten Wigan 4 times out of 6, but Wigan were nowhere near as strong in 2009 (where 3 victories came from) as they were last year and still are now, and I think if this seasons team played against Wigan of 2009, we would win a lot more convincingly than we did that year.

In 2009, he took us on a run starting after Round 22, where we lost the CCSF, 3 league games and a GF(5 games out of 9 we played)...and in all of these games could not manage to score 20 or more points - at no point in all the time of watching Saints have we ever scored less than 20 points in 9 consecutive games) His attacking play was appauling and we often didnt look to have any idea - and that was including a fully fit Leon Pryce, Keiron Cunningham, Matt Gidley and Kyle Eastmond when Long was missing - all of who we have missed massively this year imo

At no point that I remember under Potter did we have 11 first choice players out injured and be as depleted as we have been this season and we are playing far better rugby now than over the past 2 years on the whole for me. The players obviously werent happy with Potter either looking at comments made by KC and Gardner which will have also had a negative effect on things. Royce is a massive improvement on Potter, mind you saying that my grandad possibly has more motivation and inspiration in him than Potter and he's been dead 10 years!!

Until we faced Leeds at Old Trafford.

I don't want to start an argument here, but only quoting part of my post doesn't really make sense. Why would you cut this part of my post out of your quote

only to then post this yourself in order to disagree with me

This is what has caused a stand off on these boards. Posters like myself don't think Potter was perfect, but appreciate that, given what he had at his disposal, didn't do badly, especially we were tipped by some so called experts to finish outside the top 4, had "a back line worse than wakefield's" and had a lot of senior players moving on.
We could have done a lot worse and I'm not completely sure the messiah that is Daniel Anderson would have faired much better.

Plus we beat WIgan last year -at the DW, which is priceless. He also didn't lose to wire

I wasnt trying to start an argument, I was agreeing with what you had said in those points, hence why I only quoted that bit to expand on what you had said



Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but for me personally Potter was the worst coach we have had for a long time and did more negative than positive for us. I think given the same time period as Potter had, Simmons is capable of lifting silverware but only time will tell whether that is right or not.

I too, think Royce could guide us to a trophy next year, especially if McGuire leaving Wigan has the effect we're all hoping for! We've got some very exciting players in the squad. If we can get the ball going to the right aswell as we do to the left and have a kciking game somewhere in the 13, then we'll be a very dangerous side.
As I said, Potter had his pros and cons, but he was perhaps the first coach in SL we had that had real limitations in terms of salary cap and quotas, he had a lot of injuries and senior players leaving and still got up up to 2nd in the competition, so why he cops as much flack as he does I don't know.

I don't recall him missing tackles or bottling it.

I don't remember him having a particularly winning tactical set up in both the games either though.