If you can't actually write what you mean to say, it's not my fault. It isn't pedantic to be able to count to 2. The 2 criteria were "good player" as well as "good coach" and you clearly said he didn't meet the criteria.

Maurice Bamford anyone ??

Are you actually that arrogant to think that you can still try to convince people that McNamara was anything but a failure?

Anyway, I will leave it there and hopefully this can now get back on topic.

EDITED - PUMPERS

Apart from the "you deserve everything, you got etc." brigade. The posts are fairly sensible! However what we have missed here is the strategic situation that applied to all the middle 8 clubs, and of course the top eight in SL, Halifax for example stated they weren't interested in getting into SL this year, accordingly they stated the extra £250k would be used to grow their playing base, should they finish above Leigh, which they did. The strategy from the Bulls could have been, we can't be knocked off the 2nd spot and it is important we don't suffer any more injuries for the £m game. The same applied to Wakefield who had the benefit of playing the day after us, so knew what they had or hadn't to do. The SL teams who were out of the top 4 and didn't have a chance of gaining a semi final spot, also gave up the ghost where results didn't matter.
So all in all 10 clubs in the two tiers didn't have anything to play for in the Super and Middle 8s.
And with the so called £m game? Wakefield had home advantage against a weakened Champ side who had the impossible task of playing a team who had played at a more intense level all season. P&R was never going to happen was it? At least Halifax-Leigh and Sheffield perhaps realised it before causing themselves too much additional grief.

I very much doubt you will leave it there, as you have no interest in topics, you just come out with ad hominem and co insults, with your regular straw men thrown in. But that is what you enjoy. For my part I will just continue to stick to the subjects.

On McNamara I am neither trying nor wish to "convince" anyone of anything. I just advance my opinion, and where relevant, back it up with facts. Such as McNamara was made, and remains, the England/GB coach, and a good fist he has made of it so far too. Which is presumably why he remains in post. I'm not "trying" to tell you this. It is true. It really annoys you, and that makes it better.



Oh, and you are trying to deflect attention from your faux pas, in accidentally suggesting McNamara was also not a good player. He was. Very good.

Or indeed the inverse where utterly superb players turn into dreadful coaches. Gary Schofield being a wonderful player, but a god-awful coach, terrible pundit and all round gob of epic proportions. Ellery Hanley a staggering athlete but appeared to combine the strange qualities of incredible arrogance and below average IQ post-retirement.

I'm sure there are many others.

TBF Maurice Bamford did have quite the best moustache

The skillset is different from playing to coaching and lots of top players don't make the grade as coach.

Compare, Neil Fox, incomparable as a player but gave up coaching almost before his career got started; Peter Fox, very average as a player, but achieved just about every honour in the game as a coach.

If Peter Fox had been the coach for the MPG then we would have won.

Ah, yes, but he'd have brought back Johnny Wolford at stand off and Jackie [the hand-off Austin on the wing.....no matter how old they are now,.... how could we have lost with those two in the side?

And Ian Van Bellen off the bench in place of Lauaki

Come to think of it, might have been a better option!

Selwyn in place of Luaki is a no brainer!

It's funny really, when he first joined Northern he was a big pudding but Foxy got him to use his weight and he became a real wrecking ball. I'm trying to think of someone else who might be persuaded to try the same tactics....

That was Foxy's great strength (and he wasn't short of them) - convincing.. ahem... veteran players that in fact they were approaching the peak of their careers, and watching them prove him right.

Players like Woolford, Nigel Stephenson, Neil Fox, Ian van Bellen, Jimmy Thompson and the rest, inspired by the one and only Peter Fox, would have murdered Wakefield in a game like the MPG. And regularly did, when Wakey were a decent side.