To me the season was over, dead and buried the instant that Royce was forced out a quarter of the way in. We never stood a realistic chance of winning anything without a proper coach in situ. To me we then either needed to a) get a short-term appointment in a la Anderson or Noble (painful as that may have been) or find a bundle of cash to spring Brown early or b) accept our season was fatally compromised and use the last 20 games to prepare for next year, give some kids a run out and try out some different tactics and attacking schemes to see how they went. Instead we did the worst possible thing of plodding on, expecting a non-coach to give us a shot at the title, with the exact same 17 senior players playing the exact same 6 man rugby every week, leaving most of our youngsters to rot in the stands and the ones that were on the pitch shivering on the touchlines waiting for a rare sight of the ball. There is no escaping the fact that this season has been a complete and utter waste of time, talent, potential and resources at all levels of the club.

There are a lot of interesting views on this post. However a couple of things are clear
1. When Mike Rush took over, the club were rudderless, motivation was low and the majority of fans were in full 'whinge' mode.
2. A lot of the young players seemed unsure of their ability, status in the club and role on the pitch.
3. There was no one coming to the fore as a natural leader on the pitch, some good mature players but no dominant leader.
4. The club perspective seemed to be let's get this season out of the way and concentrate on the next one.

In view of that Mike did a decent job, but he isn't a coach, neither is Keiron, yet!
We acheived third, and, I believe if we had carried on with the expansive football we played in the first half of the semi, would have been looking for tickets for the Grand Final. However there in lies the problem, the game plan was changed by an inexperienced coach and it failed. Mike has never stated his need to be a coach and whatever role he now goes back too, he will give 110% for St Helens (although I'm not sure about Chief Exec!).

Agree with most of whats been said but nobodys mentioned bringing in Josh Jones this season and what a find he is?
Don't think he'd have got his chance under Royce

Of course he'dve come in under Royce - Royce would have been just as short of 3/4 options at the time as Rush was and he showed far more willingness to give youngsters a chance over the course of his tenure than Rush ever did... The only way Jones wouldn't have played under Royce is if Wheeler had come on by leaps and bounds and I very much doubt that could have happened this season except under a far more accomplished coach than either of the one we had in the post.

Jones probably would have got splinters in his @rse being the 17th man if Royce had stayed.

I don't remember any centres sitting on the bench last season.

It was a mixed bag, but better than the shambles he had been left with by Royce.

Royce did very well in his first season, but then so did Hanley, in fact hanley did much better and lasted a far shorter time in his 2nd season. Royce was given 1/4 of the season and took us to 10th.

The only issue for me was the half back issue, everything else that was done benefited the team.

Foster had to be dropped, the fans had called for this for weeks as we could all see him losing his grip on the game. Wheeler was not going great guns either. The initial move to put defensive players in their prime positions did what was needed, but as a part timer waiting for the next guy to take over, there was never going to be a longer term philosophy.

He did what he had to do - steadied a ship that had fast been sinking - and in that sense he has to be considered something of a success.

My main criticism would be that he has not allowed us to play with the shackles off often enough; the few times we have done so, with the forwards offloading and Lomax, Roby, Wilkin, Wello supporting, we have played some real good stuff. Had we seen more of this, I'm sure we'd have picked up more points in the regular season and may have had more success in the knockout comps too.

Playing the 'safety first' rugby we've had for the vast majority of the season really exposes the lack of creativity in the halves.

A few weeks ago on radio merseyside, Rush said that he has ambitions to become a CEO. But he did say that it would be a "rugby CEO" because he wasn't really interested in dealing with balance sheets and stuff like that. I imagine that he will do things like contract negotiations, etc.

Plus saints tweeted: "For all those asking, Rushie is remaining at the club and will take on a senior role within the organisation".

I think that he has done a great job considering the state we were in. Of course he has made mistakes along the way. He is an inexperienced coach. E.g. Flannery should never have played centre in the match the other night. But you can't fault his effort and determination. With regards to the style of play, it's not surprising that he went back to basics and concentrated on defence. I just don't think that he had the knowledge, experience and confidence to coach the players to play an open and expansive attacking style. I very much expect that Brown will be able to introduce the structures and systems that we need in order to do this next season. I hope so anyway. But thats just my opinion.

Royce used to take a reserve back as his fourth sub, so that if an injury occurred there was minimal disruption.
Unfortunately, the young backs who were selected (for example foster, wheeler and makinson) would end up only getting 5 or ten minutes at the end, leading to much frustration amongst the supporters that we were essentially trying to compete when using one less player.

...not to mention the CC semi-final where he picked a barely fit Wheeler (who'd only just returned from yet another injury) as the back on the bench even though if he had been needed to come on and replace an injured player he'd have probably struggled to manage more than 10 minutes himself...

Given Rush's experience in coaching first team, and the hole that he was thrown into he did a very good job to get us to third and 40mins from OT.

After the Leeds and Warrington games I thought we had definitely turned a page and the confidence returned to the players: we were offloading the ball with style and the forwards were battering their counterparts...however - and this is a major negative of his time as coach from my PoV - after this promising start we went back to percentage rugby, and one that hasn't sat well with the paying supporters. 5 drives and a kick bored the hell out of me, and our three-quarter line may as well have just taken a seat until we got into the oppo's 20.

Another negative was the way Rush handled the youngsters...from an outside perspective he seems to have completely killed the confidence within Gaskell and Foster, and has suffocated Lomax's general play from half-back by putting him alongside Hohaia. Lomax hasn't been great this season, and you'd have to say that the change of his half-back partner is a major reason for this, as it seems to be the only variable.

Overall though I'd say that Rush did the job that was expected of him, and very nearly got us to another Grand Final. Hopefully Brown can come in now and push the club on by implementing a new tactical philosophy and developing and improving the likes of Lomax and Gaskell.

So really, we're agreed. He'll have matched the reasonable expectations we had of him given the circumstances, but, realistically, you'd want considerably more delivered by a permanant head coach.

After what he's done I wouldn't want him to be permanent head coach as he doesn't seem like a good long-term solution, but do you think that some of his decisions may have been made differently had he been given the job permanently in the first place?

Nah. IMO he's shown that he has no advanced tactics or play book beyond safety first.
Plus, dropping your only player with a long kicking game when you've decided to stick to % rugby shows a real odd approach.

Not quite. As I said at the time of Royce's sacking, I was of the view that to sack an experienced coach who had taken us to a GF the season before was a mistake, especially so early in the season when our losses had been so marginal. In that sense my expectations have been realised, but whether you would consider those expectations 'reasonable' is another matter. My expectations have been met not just because we were dumped out of the CC at quarter final stage for the first time in 12 years or that we didn't make it to the GF for the first time in 7 years. But also because of the attitude towards the young players, the willingness to play senior players regardless of their form or attitude, and the style of play, among other things.

Mmm, but are you talking about your expectations of Rush as a coaching individual, or the club set up as a whole? I agree he's shown tactical deficiancies and the whole Gaskell thing stuck in my craw, but I'm sure you/I/we wouldn't criticise a player with comparible 1st team experience for making some wrong decisions, but he did take us from 10th to 3rd & he beat Leeds, Wigan, Wire & Catalan (just). Rush the man has done alright, but he'll not be swatting away offers from Superleague clubs just yet.

While there were some sensible arguments against Royce leaving, we were in a real hole and I don't think he'd have pulled us round (certainly not as soon) and I don't think he'd have won any pots.
I do think that the nail in his coffin was mcmanus thinking about ongoing ticket sales. It was extremely depressing watching given the nature of our defeats, even if they were only by a couple of points (the Hull and Bradford games stick in my mind). Moving to a interim coach immediately lowered and expectations for the season and made people look forward to next, granting the temporary staf a degree of immunity to criticism for their tenure.
I'll stick by the club as it being the right decison at the time.

Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085

Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085'" Meaning he has had offers. Hopefully not from us cause if we have another year of the boring rugby we have played my season ticket won't get renewed again.

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085'" Meaning he has had offers. Hopefully not from us cause if we have another year of the boring rugby we have played my season ticket won't get renewed again.

I think Huddersfield would have killed for a coach like Rush to get the players playing % football and to stop the rot.

He did the job that was needed. I'm sure had he done that for 6-8 games to give Saints time to find an available coach, then none of this over expectation of winning GF's would be laid at his door. A temporary measure for 3/4's of a season was just a bit too long for some fans.

Never expected us to win anything. But expect to turn up to games and get entertained. Currently we are the Bradford of a few years ago. DULL.

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085'" Yes; Saints tweeted that he's just going to move upstairs in the organisation. https://twitter.com/Saints1890/status/2 ... 9652763648

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Will Rush be at Saints next year? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19800085'" Yes; Saints tweeted that he's just going to move upstairs in the organisation. https://twitter.com/Saints1890/status/2 ... 9652763648

He did okay. We were heading over a ravine into the bottom half of the top eight before he came in and we were forty minutes away from another Grand Final. Given where we were he did a great job in stopping that. However, at best we only managed to replicate what we did last season and we didn't play as well at the tail end as we did last year. For an emergency appointment it was a success and kept KC out of the spotlight which was important too. Potter won coach of the year and deservedly so. After that though I think you'd be hard pressed to find another person as deserving as Mike. He stepped up from coaching the kids, despite having no previously revealed ambitions to do so in a honourable manner akin to Potter.

Smith and Agar spring to mind straight away as being far more deserving than Rush.

I was reflecting on this season compared to last.

Unlike last season, this year has seen:

- hardly any young players play on anything like a regular basis (and of those who played last year, those who have featured regularly have all gone backwards, even Makinson despite his superb finishing);
- our defence has been unpredictable: one minute squeezing the life out of the opposition, the next conceding 30 plus points in one match;
- our attack has been nowhere and we have had to rely upon kicks to secure tries (when we actually remember to kick of course);
- our style of play has been boring to the point of rigidity, beyond anything I've seen from Saints even under Potter (who produced some frighteningly boring stuff at times);
- we failed to get into the CC semi for the first time in 12 years;
- we failed to get to the GF for the first time in 7 years (contrast that with McManus's statement at the end of last season when he said he wanted us to start converting our chances);
- we have failed to have a single player in the national side for the first time in I think 20 years.

If any other coach - any coach, regardless of experience - had overseen that legacy everyone on here bar none would be calling for his head. As it is, because McManus has been crafty and used Mike Rush, enough fans are soft enough to make allowances. McManus didn't get to being in the top 50 wa ... sorry bankers in the world by not being crafty.

However, I judge Rush just as I would any other appointment and when I compare what he hasn't achieved with what Simmons did achieve (given all that HE had to contend with), I'm extremely glad Rush won't be coaching the team next year and my gut feelings about the season way back when Simmons was sacked were bob on.

However, Mike Rush is still telling the world he's done a great job, 'given where we were at the early part of the season'. Yeah, right. Nobody had won anything or got anywhere in the early part of the season. That's what the early part of the season is about. In the end though Leeds lost more games than us and played worse than us and yet reached two finals, so that line just doesn't wash with me. Even McManus has gotten on to the bandwagon, trying to justify his decision by saying that not only did we lose the games we did but the ones we won were against 'weak opposition'. Like Saints have never lost to weak opposition before. And as if Bradford was weak - they would have made the top eight but for their six point deduction.

Awful season. Glad it's over. Glad Rush has gone. Hopefully Brown will be able to pick things up and start over.

The only bright sparks to the season for me have been those wonderful tries scored by Tommy Makinson, yet again not recognised as he should have been (except by John Kear) and Josh Perry's naked run. But even Josh Perry's naked run is a disappointment because I wasn't there to see it.

I think its fairly conclusive now that the vote has shown 70% think Rush did a good job under the circumstances and restraints put on him.
He did a relatively good job with the younger players and grounded Lomax, Makinson and Jones into fixed positions, opportunities were given to young Swift putting him in good stead for the next season.
He kept the wheels on the Wagon without the temptation of putting more younger players in the side which would have destabalized the team. There could have also been the temptation to open up the playing style and play entertaining rugby but I,m sure his agenda would have been to make sure we make the play offs.
Hopefully Rush will never be put into this position again by the club....big thanks to Mike Rush for his loyalty and willingness to take on the pressures of an acting head coach.