Not solely but he's a big influence.

2007.

Games in and amongst this year.

The widespread respect he is held in within the game.

Is that enough to fend off Brian McDermott if he was interested? Perhaps not. And Lang to (fair play to 6I6 for sticking his head above the parapet there). But are they interested?

X - Steve Folkes.

Y - Because he's a better coach than Macca.

Very Experienced, Disciplinarian, Proven Winner, Fine Record of bringing youth through, Good contacts.

How's that?

Of course we could just keep Macca and continue the way we are going though?
Hows that sound?

I agree he has to take a fair chunk of the blame. I just got the impression Iestyn saw him as pretty much the only reason.

Putting other reasons aside, surely for a club who (as confirmed by Hood)are spending close to the Salary Cap it would be reasonable to expect a top 4 finish?

A huge turnover of quality players will have an impact and possibly make the difference between being consistantly in the top four and winning SL but at the end of the day we are spending probably close to Leeds and Saints and not anywhere near them.

I didnt personally expect Silverware for 2-3 years given the upheaval at the club but i expected us to rebuild in a structured manner by bringing in quality proven players and developing the academy. The Cap should have allowed us to do this, which leads me to think we are operating drastically under the Salary Cap.

Perhaps a few years ago. A lot more than 4 SL clubs are spending the full cap nowadays. I feel we could have expected to make the play offs as a minimum with the players we have.

So lets forget about the 25 games we've lost since then shall we.
Sorry but the rest of the season easily wipes them out and haven't Salford beaten Saints and Leeds this year.
By who and how much longer can he live off it.
Definitely not.
I think you'd be surprised how many coaches would be intrested. Plus I've been mentioning Folkes for well over a year now and you no it.

Maybe that's where the name "People's Team" comes from?

Brian Mac just lost his third match of the season to Huddersfield. I don't think that makes him a bad coach, but there's plenty on here that would if it happened to another Mac.

Would Folkes come? You think he would. I wonder.

Sorry but Quins aren't meant to be in the same class as us so that point isn't valid.
I don't do you.

Quite. We are a class below Quins.

To add to that, in an attempt to address some of the naivity the salary cap question inspires, here is an extract from something I posted elsewhere:

"...Add in too the caution not to assume that the salary cap represents the total of what the players at a club receive, or is directly comparable between clubs. It depends also very much on things like the proportion of a player's package (especially overseas ones) which a club thinks it can justify in paying in non-PAYEable form, and the ability of a player (cos it can't be the club...) to secure payment for his image rights from an "unconnected" third party. And that assumes every club has been making complete and accurate salary cap declarations, of course. Some of these matters are subject to current investigation by HMRC and the RFL, and while certain clubs are seemingly pretty worried, I have it on strong authority that Bulls are not amongst them. Maybe that has some bearing on comparing squads between clubs? - whatever."

That was part of a wider post commenting on a thread started by the Gledster on the club's seeming decline. Remember my point from before, that you can secure a better-quality squad if you can find ways to pay players more of their total package tax free (or if they can secure image rights etc earnings from outside the club). But I did go on to conclude:

"That said, its still hard to see how any of the above explains the repeated capitulations in defence we have seen time after time this year. You just sit and wait for it to happen - and that against Cas was totally and utterly unacceptable and I for one have totally lost patience with it now."

I can't comment on today - I did not go - but from what has been written, its sounds like I'd have no reason to say anything any different.

No. He is a joke.

Get him out, he is a disgrace. Sorry, he is a fu**ing disgrace. Just look where we are in the table. No one can defend that!!!

The evidence would suggest that he is not doing a good job but he surely has not coached the players to drop a ball from the kick off, to pass forwards, to drop it, to miss tackles. Has he? Its the players who seem to be effing things up, is that down to Mac?

Arguments for:
I'm sure by now everyone knows the AF position which is that we can't replace McNamara in case the incoming coach is worse. This is of course will always be the case no matter what happens, as things can always get worse, but if we never make that change we can never know, so essentially the argument is circuitous.

The second but connected argument is that no-one of any quality would want the job, but once again if we take that seriously we wouldn't get rid of McN and we'd never know if that were the case. The other difficulty with this argument is that both Tony Smith and Nathan Brown have taken over struggling/under performing teams during McN's tenure and have improved them enormously. So whilst we don't know if either of these coaches would have come to the Bulls we do know that coaches have been available that would have likely made a significant improvement.

The third argument is that McN is doing something (usually poorly specified) to 're-build' the club and that this will yield some future benefits. However given his lack of success with the team he has currently built this also seems unlikely.

A fourth argument concerns finances, which are all a little opaque, however it is apparent that declining attendances and the possibility of reduced revenue from sponsors because of a lack of success might contribute as much to a worsening of our financial position as any costs involved in removing McNamara.

I would have loved him to be successful, particularly as a young british coach, but that hasn't happened and the time has come.

ive got a lot of time for macca and theres no doubting how much he wants the club to succeed so ill never be over critical about him because he's giving it his all. unfortunatly his all isnt good enough i think he should step aside for the good of the club we need a fresh start

Let's imagine we're not talking about rugby.

Imagine you work somewhere where one department used to be the top performing dept. but over the last few years is now one of the poorest performing. The people are making basic errors that you know they shouldn't make, failing to do their job to the best of their ability. You know they can perform because occasionally (when the pressure's on) they pull out all the stops and do a great job for a week.

Their manager is not telling them to do these things.

So, who do you blame? The team or their manager?

He's my 2 pence worth

The current squad has beaten both Leeds and Saints and for 60 minutes against both sides in the return meetings we're at least the equal.

They are the 2 best teams in the competion and we've proved we can go toe to toe with both of them and come away with a win.

Question have to be asked of both the playing staff and the coaching staff.
The players seem at times confused and unsure of who should be doing what. At other times they've seemed unfussed about defeat after defeat.
So the fault lays with the players then?

Not entirely. The coaching staff is supposed to get the players primed and ready for the up coming game. The head coach is supposed to know what tactics and selection the opposition are likely to use and should come up with a way to counter them. He is supposed to motivate and encourage the players and prepare them for what they need to do.

This does not appear to be happening at Bradford.

Unfortunatly for McNamara time is not on his side. He's had 3 years and we've gone backwards every year.

I'm sorry Steve. But we're the faithful fans of Bradford Bulls. We turn up every week and pay out our hard earned money to watch you and your troop of clowns disapoint us every time. Do the honorable thing. Fall on your own sword, walk away. Try and save yourself some face, admit defeat

What he said.

Whether or not Mac is a dead man walking, a considered question I have been trying to figure out the answer to is whether I think any other coach could get a better season out of the present line-up of alarmingly inconsistent and frustrating group of players. I watch what they do, and how they do it, and despite the names on the teamsheet, I reckon not, or at least, they would have the devil's own job.

My own tupppenorth is that by whatever means we seem to have ended up with a squad which you would think was good enough to be top six, if nowhere near top two, but it has emphatically proved that it is a bottom four team.

And we are. Let's make no bones about it now, the Bulls squad have put themselves where they deserve to be, bottom four team.

I am not saying McNamara is blameless in that, and won't be at all surprised if a coach in his situation went, and indeed after the resukts we've had he would already have been out of many places, but the players have to take this one on the chin, as the majority of the responsibilit, at least, certainly lies with them.

I don't see 17 untamed geniuses who just need a shrewd point in the right direction.

Obviously many of the players have themselves to blame. Unfortunately many of the worst culprits were recruited by the head coach and haven't developed under his teachings.

Totally agree macca doesn`t teach them to knock on and play like compete tools. I went today and we were ok in the 1st half and then went to pieces in the 2nd half, mind you the big change in the game was when deacs head was almost taken off, which should has been a least a yellow card so we ended up losing him for the first half suppose did not help matters.

Some very poor decisions came from the ref ian smith but our downfall was silly errors, missed tackles and rovers made us pay for those.

Play offs very unlikely now, we might has well start bringing the youngsters in for the rest of the season and least some of them will play with a bit more pride.

But like in all other teams sports isn't the had coach/manger ultimately responsible for results.

I think it was Cibaman??? argued a good few weeks ago - after one of the earlier hang-em-high threads - that by July it should be clear how things have turned out, and that would be the time to decide on any changes on the coaching front.

Well, its July.