Exactly my point. Why on gods earth we have brought Fozzard back is another brainless decision. I have respect for what he achieved at Saints as we WAS a good honest prop forward who made hard yards. We shouldnt be bringing back over the hill players at 33 years old.

makes a change from the old "Sack the Board" chants - "SACK THE TEAM, SACK THE TEAM, SACK THE TEAM".

and who would you have brought in who cost less than £50k (probably £30k) in wages? well worth the money

Well, if no other team wants to take the players off our hands, how do you think we can afford to pay them off? Buttons and lint?

Changes I'd like to see:

Potter replaced if the same dour tactics continue,
Let Hargreaves and Meli go. The former has gone backwards and is a non entity and the latter a gaffe prone chuckle brother, same also true of Gardner. Would be nice to see if we have any youngsters push for a place in the threequarters... Gaskell?
Give Wheeler a sustained run at centre,
Maggenis and Frodsham to get a decent go in the pack should they avoid injury.

Other than that I think the side is fine. Pryce will have to start pulling his finger out, though

Thats exactly the problem - I've said on another thread I'd love to see us with 2 new wingers , the young lad from Leeds (cant remeber his name) and Ainscough from Wigan would be imo great as they wouldnt cost the earth but the biggest issue is who would take Gardner and Meli off us and make it worth their while to leave? There is nothing stopping players like this from sitting on their contracts. even if we did have the cash to pay them off I think it still counts on the cap

A lot of people are bagging Hargreaves which i don't really understand. Apart from the mistake Saturday (in which 3 players were caught out) he hasn't put a foot wrong. He may not be a world beater but he certainly puts his hand up and gets stuck in. Ramps up every set, doesn't miss a great deal in defence, not sure on his handling errors but it doesn't strike me as being poor.

Who else would we get in to play for the money he is getting? Give the lad a break! Fact of the matter is we can't have a squad of 20+ world beaters.

I love posters like this!


and then

Doh!

Make up your mind mate!

When you signed him a few on here asked my opinion, what tm - tl has just posted is what I said about him, an honest hard working prop, but never top class.
At Wigan we had a choice of Prescott, Hargreaves and O'Carroll who is a year or two younger. IMO Wigan made the right choice in letting Bryn go.

Leon move to Centre or wing (Leon is banned from kicking)
Wheeler at 6
Kyle at 7
Meli takes over from Gilly in the pack
Gardner keeps his wing place (for now, untill his contract runs out)
Armstrong on t'other wing
Soliola centre for Pryce
Bring Kevin Ward back
Maurie told he does not pass the ball EVER
Hargreaves told to watch Jammer more
Potter given more time

To add his blistering pace to our attack lol

Give me a break. We lost the GF in an very close fashion, just as we lost to Leeds closely a few weeks ago. We beat them twice ealier in the season, don't forget (i was extraordinarily happy with the way we beat them at headingly). We've also turned in some excellent defensive performances in the playoffs.
The game significantly changed this year and robbed us of our main tactic of the quick play and scoot (which wasn't exactly rocket science from DA), add to that our main playmaker has gone steadily down hill, Cayless hasn't played at all and our board is expecting young players to do the job of seasoned pros.
Potter's job is to get the most amoount of Ws he can, and he didn't do a bad job.

lol, well thats the easy bit. You can sell or offload as many players as you want, however the coach is most pivotal.

The chairman either trusts potter to coach a group of players whomever that may be or .......

you dont trust him, get rid and bring in someone else.

The chairman in this case is most pivotal as he needs to see how many boxes potter ticks of the 5 most important leadership traits

Honest ? will be if he tells meli he is sh** and gets rid
Forward-Looking ? beyond 10yards would be better
Competent ? I will give him that one
Inspiring ? 1/2 time dressing room didnt look inspired
Intelligent ? benefit ot the doubt

personally speaking, i reckon although trophyless the season was ok,
defensivelylooked better than most
offensively we weren't at the races

if i was chairmen i would change things, get after noble whilst he is on the market. Thats nothing against potter, but i wouldnt want to find out next october that i should have changed things now.

I really really hope your taking the p!ss !!! swap 1 5 drives and a kick man for another? I think not

Yeah your right the game has significantly changed but Potter has changed our style of play and it has set us backwards there is no doubting that. Our defence has improved point taken but we have failed to score more than 15 points in the last 8 weeks of the season so that tells me our offensive play has gone way downhill. We have gone backwards this year and changes have to be made. Potter hasnt got the most out of us because as I said before our attacking play has gone backwards to non existant at times and Im sorry if you dont agree with this but he has to go. As for Cayless he should have been released at the end of 2008 due to his injuries and replaced accordingly that was a big mistake as Jammer has taken on the workload of two props this season and Ive said this before he will end up like Stuart Fielden if his workload isnt cut.

That point was made earlier in the season when Leeds were going through a bad spell which I didnt see them coming through. I stand corrected and they fully deserved to win Super League.

what about cullen



your right, we should wait until next year, when everyone else improves again and they may even over take us as second best.

But at least we will all sleep better because we did the "noble" thing and stuck with potter!

Perhaps he will once Long's gone. From an outsider's perspective, it often seems that he's content to play a secondary role to Long in terms of dictating play. I don't doubt he's got the ability but I would question whether he has confidence in that ability.

nope, dont think thats the issue, as long was out for ages and pryce didnt improve any.

plenty of ability, and he is by no means rubbish

i just think he cant be bothered, and lost his appetite. it would be interesting to know what his attitude is like in training.

The attack has 1 dimensional, which has stifled us and forced us up the middle, but to demand his head after 1 season where he's taken the reigns of and ageing and shriking squad, finished 2nd in the table, got to the semis of the CC (beaten by a very good Hudds performance) and narrowly lost the GF is folly imo. This is the guy who got the Catalans to third in the table, remember - you don't become a bad coach overnight!

nobody thinks he is a bad coach, they would be fools to. however many people may choose to dislike his coaching

on a similar note, fielden became a bad prop over night so it is possible.



figure out which icon is willie, and which is fielden

So are we demanding that he should not only win trophies, but also in the manner we deem fit? Or are we just demanding that we're at least entertaining losers?

For me, decimation through injury and then the resulting fatigue in the front row players meant we were starved of any decent go forward/platform and was a major contributing factor to our dour approach. We looked jaded imo.

Regarding Potter and his stature at Saints, I am afraid the boo-boys won''t be happy but he isn't going anywhere.

The fact of the matter is thus: Big Mac knows we're in a transitional phase and he wanted someone to come in and blood the next generation of kids. We all know this and we all know how well Potter did over 2 to 3 years at Catalans. Note the length of time there people, that's 2 to 3 times longer than he's had here, yet he's still taken us to the Grand Final, the semi-final of the CC and 2nd in the league.

His remit this season has been to play it up the middle. Why? Because we have no pace outwide, yet we cannot just replace the wingmen as we cannot afford to release them from their contracts and if no one else is interested in taking up their contracts then I am afraid we have to make do. Potter wants us to revert to the side that throws the ball around left, right and centre, but until we blood the kids sufficiently to be confident enough to do this, the club will use it's primary weapon, that being the pack.

Potter was always going to be in an unenviable position, but why? DA was a great coach, but I think we're getting a bit over-emotional in our thoughts of his legacy. Fair enough, we won the CC every year he was here, but we also failed in the GF more times than we won it under him, yet he is held up as some kind of wunderkind coach, the 2006 season apart.

If Potter had won us the GF, if Meli hadn't had made those 2 excruciating cock-ups, if Maurie hadn't tricked himself into thinking he was Tony P and if Bryn hadn't turned his back on Diskin on our own try line, we'd be talking of winning the GF and you know what the sad thing is, the same people would still be posting the same threads on he condemning Potter for being a different person to our last coach.

He cannot win at Saints.