You seem to have something of a drink fixation tonight FA

Tony Smith took over Wire when they were pretty much rock bottom of the league and going nowhere, thanks to the "efforts" of a guy that plenty on here would bizarrely like to see return to Odsal despite having a less than sparkling effort.

Smith in mid season had to ship out the odd "troublemaker" in quick time and yet still managed to lead them quickly up the table and, of course, won them the Challenge Cup. Fair enough, Wire did not make the 8 but they were well out of the picture anyway when Smith came along. I reckon that a comfortable league improvement and a Cup Win in about five months is a pretty decent return TBF.

After all, if WE had won the cup, you would likely be quickly on here in order to gloat that a CC win is a sign of McNamaras quality.

As for the end of the season? I agree that improvement has been shown but it was all too little too late. The players showed this season that they could perform when they wanted to do but that they were incapable of a consistent run until the end of the season when it ultimately did not make any difference.

An early cup exit and a failure to reach the play-offs represents a very poor season and I fail to see why anyone could feel any different.

Three points.

1. What are you basing your comment that the players can do it 'when they want to?' on? Why would they 'want to' more at Wire than at Salford?

2. The Wire example is far less cut and dried than you make out. TS took over after three games - how could they be 'out of the picture'? Since then they have won 11 games from 23, making it back into the eight then falling away. Have a look at last year and guess what, the 'useless' Cullen/Lowes combination won precisely 11 games between rounds 4 and 26.

3. Now it's all done with, have a look at our results this year. I don't understand how your first reaction can be 'poor' rather than 'plain weird'.

The thing is, no-one is saying it has not been a poor season. It is downright disingenuous at best, and thoroughly dishonest at worst, for anyone to suggest otherwise if seeking to try and shift the argument back to their own platform.

The only point that seems to be at issue, from reading all the comments on this thread, is whether in the final quarter of the season we see some hope for the future, and whether as a result people are feeling any happier - or at least any less unhappy - than a few weeks ago.

I submit that, in the minds of most people, the mood has improved and the gloom lifted somewhat. That might not suit some people, especially anyone whose principal contribution seems to be bayoneting the wounded, and there are some people who still seem to be as unhappy now as they would have been had we lost the last five - or at least they say they are.

People I gave spoken too though fit into the "gloom lifted" category for sure, although the consensus is that we need to see a continuation of the late improvement surge into next season before we can say this [iannus horribilis[/i is truly behind us.

Maybe if people want to have a post-mortem on the season, and spend away their winter hours chewing on everything that went wrong and on how bad we were and how bad the coach was, that belongs in a different "fighting the last war" thread? One that those of us who prefer to look forward can read or ignore as we choose.

My question is why. A lot of people I know have said we only started to play when it looked like we were playing for nothing when the pressure was off.

And the final game of the season when the pressure was back on - we still put out a performance. i think that would be due to the increased confidence a run of wins will do for you.

I am in the "gloom lifted" category. Despite what I said a few weeks ago a good run to finish the season has given me some optimism. Macca is still going to be coach next season so we have to work with what we have got. The only player leaving that I feel could be a mistake is Morrison- I will shed no tears over the rest. The ones coming in I know nothing about but am happy that Beaver will probably have vouched for the Manly 2.

The other reason for optimism is that the few lads who have had some gametime from the academy have shown that SL is not out of their depth and should improve with more gametime - esp Donaldson

Did we it took us a good 25 minutes to get going in which time Hull had created 3 or 4 good chances which they didn't take it. I'm not doubting the effort wasn't their but it wasn't a good performance at all.

Now that is a bit harsh when one reason Hull didn't take their chances is because we scrambled well, the chance they did take was dubious in the extreme and the late withdrawal of Dave Halley and the sinbinning of Glenn Morrison each provided serious disruption at a time when it was difficult to do much about it. Regardless, we won the game.

So are we expected to be happy with 9th place and an early exit from the cup? Ok , the last few weeks have made things a little better, but we can't be pleased can we? Surely not.

I think we could still do with some answers as to why we have performed so eratically this year. If indeed there is any.

And as publically stated at the fans forum (answering my question

) the club would have expected at LEAST a decent play off run. So what happens now we have not had one?

Since people seem intent on dragging this thread away from the questions asked by the OP, lets revisit them?

=darkred1. Are we any happier with Steve as coach for 2010?
A tad but i still have huge question marks over the performances this year. the run of 5 games has probably come at the right time for him, imagine the calls if we'd missed the play offs after being in them. The point is the way the end of the season turned out has probably bought him some time (with the fans), however, the season is not made or lost in 5 games and I guess the overall end result was disappointing.

=darkred2. Has the recent run of games proved anything about his ability to manage the team and motivate them?
It's easy to say yes but I'm not too sure, he lost certain players which seemed to coincide to some degree with a turn around in our form, I guess you could argue he also lost others earlier in the year (who recently came back) which could have altered it the other way as well. There are 27 games in the season and lets be honest he's had plenty of chance before this year to deal with issues of management and motivation. His only response is to say the gods have been smiling on us, I'm not sure that cuts the mustard when your a head coach with a team which at times has looked lost, disinterested and lacking ideas.

=darkred3. What should be a realistic goal for next season?
Queue the 10 game brigade again.........


Play Offs the same as this year, unfortunately something he also missed out on.

Me?

I would suggest that reaching the play offs has to be a minimum every year. And we didn't this year - so not good enough really.

Macnamara is here for the next season at least, so we need more signings, more support for him in the form of assistants and more openess with the fans to keep us in the picture.

I wonder whether the whole Tame saga caused a few off field problems during the first part of the season.

I also wonder if Newton ruffled some feathers off the pitch.

I guess we'll never know the full truth, however we speculate

Absolutley nothing.

Very fair assessment.

I'm sure that's not true. I'm sure Steve has had a slap on the back of the hand and a "please don't do that again" request, followed by a pay rise......


Nah seriously. None of us are happy with the season and despite the fact it got so much better at the end, it clearly wasn't good enough.

It could be worse though, we could be Celtic fans.

There were high points to what proved to be a low season though. The run at the end, the excitement of that last match, the beating Saints & Leeds.

At least I don't feel as bad now as I did after we'd just lost to Quins at home.

I'll now enjoy attending the Grand Final as a neutral and get nicely drunk, then enjoy attending the England games and the Four Nations final between Australia & New Zealand

After that, the god awful couple of months where there is no RL



I don't really know where I stand on the McNamara issue. At one point earlier this year I thought he needed to go. However I'm not entirely convinced that it's him that's the problem (and I don't say this based on the end of season run, that's irrelevant). It seems a lot like other backroom staff members may be just as much, if not more to blame. It's difficult for any of us to know properly from the terraces, but I would be at least placated if we saw some changes to the assistants in the close season. People have a tendency to blame the head coach (and I appreciate he has a major hand in selecting the rest of the coaching staff), but perhaps we sometimes need to remember it isn't just him doing the coaching. The only coaching team member I really wouldn't want to see leave is Medders, but that may be me ridiculous bias as he was always a favourite player of mine.

You forgot the contract extension for at least 5 years.



You say we could be Celtic fans. But they expected to be last.

Being a Leigh or donny fan wouldn't be good. But as with every club you gotta take the rough with the smooth and if this is the worst it gets then it's not a bad situation to be in.

Since this thread seems determined to become a post-mortem on the season (and no Debaser, my comment was aimed generally not just at you, and we are all guilty) then I spotted this observation from Amber Avenger posted in another place:



Anyone able to add anything here? Heard one or two rumours but nothing concrete. Wouldn't be the first time if it was, but might help explain a few things?

After Wire at home ?

I heard the comments on Radio Leeds. Jamie Bloem implied he knew who he was referring to but didn't name names. He did seem pretty serious about it though. I have heard nowt myself but there aren't that many players leaving really...

Bloem likely to be well-informed?

Probably more so than most of us.

I thought it was interesting that Sol continued to help out in the warm up despite being out for the year. He also came over to wave goodbye at the end of the Hull match. Can anyone remember seeing anything of Newton during his spell on the sidelines? Not saying he was definitely the 'troublemaker' just cannot recall seeing him at the matches, maybe some on here can shed some light if he was still around on matchdays?

Well if Wakefield go down the pan next season, we might be able to put 2 & 2 together.