Interested to hear what other peoples opinions are on what's best when replacing a coach, thought about this last night whilst watching the Warrington game.

Bradford for the past few coaches have promoted from within, in that time we've had great success which has tailed off recently. I guess there will be changes at clubs over the coming season (as there always is) and I wondered is it better to promote a coach from within or to keep things fresh and bring new ideas to the club.

There seems to be a mix across Super League with Warrington & Catalans promoting from within and Saints and Huddersfield going for a fresh approach. Is there also a limit to the amount of times you can promote from within before it starts to get stale or is it determined by the person and not how the coaches above them have worked in the past?

Well you say we've had great sucess promoting from within, but tbh the only coach we've had during SL that's been promoted from within and had sustained success was Noble. Prior to that it was what? 1 title and 1 cup. Also, you have to wonder how much of the Bulls success was down to Noble and how much to the squad he had at his disposal? For example the treble winning team of 2003

Withers, Vaikona, Naylor, Hape, Vainkolo, Paul, Deacon, Vagana, Lowes, Anderson, Gartner, Peacock, Forshaw, Fielden, Reardon, Radford, Gilmour, Pratt, Langley, Radford, Leon and Karl Pryce, Chris Bridge,

I think it would have to have been a very poor coach who didn't win at least 1 cup with that team.

Promoting from within can work for a time but I can't think of anywhere it's lasted forever. Liverpool FC probably had the best of it with Shankly, Paisley, Fagin and Dalglish but then they had Evans and that was it.

Here we had Elliott and Smith put in some very firm foundations. There was some great recruitment too at a time when perhaps we were more clued up than much of the opposition. We signed very few duds. 96-2000 we may have only won two trophies but things were building. Noble really came an the perfect time and reaped what had been sown years before.

If the Bradford (Brian Smith) blueprint is so unsuccessful, why are so many of our former players and coaches who worked with Smith, Elliott or Noble in employment, or highly regarded (if atm unemployed)?
At the current time Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Bradford, England, Halifax, Dewsbury, Harlequins, Huddersfield, Penrith Panthers, all are coached by Brian Smith decsendents. and this is just off the top of my head!! add to this list Karl Harrison and the former saints coach Daniel Anderson and its quite impressive!


Coaching styles and methods are important. Yes Elliott and Smith only won 2 trophies, but their values and methods were imprinted in the club at a time when we needed structure. Now we need more!! All of the above teams and their coaches seem to have one thing in common. they have been fairly successful but reach a plateau and dont consistently win competitions. So far, all of the Brian Smith schooled coaches listed above(including Smith himself) have not yet won a trophy with their current team.
Perhaps the coaching needed to win has moved on?? Peter Fox won the league and other trophies during the 70s and 80s, but would his methods be antiquated now? Has the Smith method gone stale? Do we need sombody Like Matterson or Walters, who have developed under Wayne Bennett? or is the competition just more even? Should we go with a very British coach, like JOhn Kear?

At the current time we have McNamara, whose grounding has been very much in the Smith mould. beneath him, there is nobody who would be jumping out to replace him, if, the axe should fall.

of the available coaches around now, who could replace him? who would be different enough if the system is so out of date???