Most fans questioned whether Jimmy was the man from the outset.

In my humble opinion, it's the coaches job to train, educate and motivate the team to continually get the best out of the players. I can count on one hand how many times this season I've walked away from the game thinking, "yeah they played well". And they did play well, very well in fact, which is way it's so frustrating. We've all seen what this group of players are capable of but why can't Jimmy get them to reproduce it more often?

I expect Jimmy to be there again next season regardless of the outcome of this season. Hopefully he'll have better luck with injuries to key men so that he won't have those tricky selection dilemmas.

It absolutely is. Nobody was thinking about next season at all. All change for the last game or no change at all.

Aye, well played Fax. Glad you wiped some smug grins from some Leyther faces. Lets hope we can do it next week too.

cheers mate. was talking to AOB in a pub in the town centre, nice bloke. Asked him about your game next week and he sounded like the bulls are ready to go out and do a job on Leigh

Unfortunately our players are very good at talking about a good performance, actually doing it is another thing. Leigh will be much improved on Sat in what will be their final home game so if we are going to get a result we will have to improve significantly.

No we won't, we are for 80% of the time already a ten times better team than played at KR and that was a game that was not on our win-list (whatever anybody says) so the result can be disregarded. Banker loss. I'd say if we play at only 75% of how we played against Salford then that should be good enough to do Leigh.

Also, WHY will Leigh "be much improved"? I mean, it's one possibility, of course, but why be so certain everyone we come up against is bound to be on top of their game? That's the sort of defeatist mindset that we don't want the players to have. For mine, playing SL clubs is one thing, but there is no reason why we shouldn't win every game against Championship clubs, even Leigh have not proved quite the formidable force suspected, we have had some very tight games against them, and if only we can field Gaskell then we should go there with confidence. Even if we can't, Leigh are no Salford, and rather than being confident, IMHO will now be shiiting their pants after their Halifax spanking. I'd say it is much more likely that they will be edgy and nervous as hell, and vulnerable to being beat. As long as we roar out and do an early job on them. Which, given our unpredictability, is a big "if".

AOB's stats for games against Widnes and HKR add up to 85 tackles and 58 metres.

Surely, some combo of Robbie, Ferres, Diskin, Harrison has to say this is taking all the kid's threat away. We might as well go find Tony Fisher if we're simply going to allow prop forwards to run at him.

Shocking coaching. One of our biggest attacking threats has been taken away

From what I have heard reported from the Fax game, Leigh were a shadow of the team that finished top. Personally I can't see them playing that poorly again, at home in front of their own specs. I expect they'll be fired up and want to finish with a win at home. Being top of their game are your words but I'd be extremely surprised if they play so poorly again this weekend. We look like a side lacking a bit of belief so if Leigh get off to a flyer we might be in trouble.

There are a lot of mitigating factors to consider before one thinks of getting rid of Lowes and plenty of reasons for a change too.

In his favour you can argue the following:

He’s had to mould an almost completely new team with new halfbacks, inexperienced hooker and new fullback – not easy.
We lost our identified halfback Gareth O’Brien before a ball was kicked and had to recruit a last minute stop gap.
Playing in the championship you have a few easy games – it’s no preparation for the middle 8s.
We have a salary cap that’s the equivalent of 8 decent players less than the SL players we’ve come up against.
We’ve lost our most creative and influential player at the most crucial time of the season (Gaskell).
Our only SL quality fullback has been very injury prone.
A lot of players have been exposed as clearly only championship quality
We’ve had to rely on a makeshift halfback pairing at the most crucial time of the year.

Against him you can say:

He’s had plenty of opportunity to mould the squad against lesser quality teams with the aim of peaking at the middle 8s but has seen form plateau as the season has gone on even when key players have been available.
He doesn’t seem to have got the team to play a consistent 80mins apart from 2 or 3 times in the season despite largely inferior opposition and few injuries to key players.
He’s continuously picked players that don’t seem to contribute anything (Lauaki) and ignored players who have done well (Walshaw and Fleming).
He seems to have not bothered with some players without giving them an opportunity (Davies and Peterson) and dropped others completely (Tahraoui, Baille, Ulugia, Shaw, Uaisele) without any explanation.
He’s recruited players that seem to be surplus to requirements such as Mendieka whilst being unable to fill gaps elsewhere.

In my opinion the mitigations outweigh the reasons for getting rid – for now. Deciding to get rid of a coach is a tough call. Cummins was given the boot because he’d lost the dressing room. McNamara was appointed too early in his career and persevered with for too long. The risk is we do that with Lowes at a time when getting back up is incredibly important to the future of the club. One would like to show patience and you need to give a coach the chance to put things in place but with P&R the stakes are now so high you can’t afford to do that as much.

Before getting rid you also have to ask can the club afford it? Also who could you attract that would be better? Morrison is another great ex player but is no more experienced a coach than Lowes. Brian Smith is vastly experienced but could we afford him? Would he leave Wakefield? Is he really that good anymore? Wakefield have blown very hot and cold. Also would he stay around for long enough if we got him? Would Potter come back? Could we afford Noble? Would he want the job?

Who else is out there with the proven pedigree or would we be looking at another young coach with unproven ability.

I’d be keen to stick with Lowes for now and hope we address the weaknesses in the squad for 2016. If by some miracle we do go up we’d need to bring in 8 or 9 quality players or we’d be coming straight back down. The deficiencies in the squad for SL are glaringly obvious and we’d get absolutely murdered if we tried to compete with the squad we have.

Brian Smith has worked miracles at Wakefield, they are now as bad as us

Bullseye,very good post

Whoever gets the last promotion place,whether it be us, Wakie, Leigh, Halifax, I don't think anybody would be favourites to come straight back down. Of course they would be favourites to finish in the bottom 4 but would be able to strengthen sufficiently enough to finish in the top 4 of the Middle 8 play offs next season

Bullseye' assessment is based on fact BUT on the basis of what we've seen so far this season has Lowes improved the players he's had at his disposal?

Would you give him the extra playing budget confident that he would correctly identify the areas of greatest need and rectify them, in order that we achieve promotion? Or in perfectly possible event we go up, aspire to 8/9/10th and thereby get 4 home games?

Sorry, but I wouldn't. HOWEVER, were he to get us up I think he'd have earned the chance.

TBF I think AOB and Tom Olbison have improved a lot this season.

As a team though we haven't improved or become more consistent.

However how much is thst down to players being simply not being good enough?

I think it's fair to say that the relegated team would still have the advantage of having played a full season at SL intensity against SL teams, which is a fair advantage, as I think we have shown this season.

I liked the idea of having two seasons between P&R to allow the promoted team time to get up to speed. An Alternative might be to allow a higher foreign quota to the promoted team to mitigate the fact that virtually all contracts are long since sorted out, before the team going up can join the feeding frenzy.

Sounds like you've been reading Garry "biased as hell and has not got a Scooby f'ing Doo about rugby league" Schofield's column in League Express!!

Olbison, good shout. AOB's gone backwards since mid-season and Lowes' use of the kid resulting in pretty much nothing from dummy half in our last two is huge black mark against him in my view. To end up with no halves and a hooker making 40+ tackles is absurd.

Some of them clearly aren't good enough but surely you'd want to see more than one player kick on in a divison below where they played last year.

Think Olbison has really come on this year, his breaks have gotten us some tries, signing Halifihi then not using him in certain games we should win lets say its stupid totally lets O'Brien with no back up who i bet cannot wait to rest at the end of the season.

What's the total salary value of all the players we have signed but who Jimmy simply will not use, Ebola outbreaks excepted?

If we hadn't signed any of them, how much salary cap would we have had to poach a decent half from somewhere?

The salary cap only applies to players who have played a competitive game for us in the season I think. There will be several players who have been here all through pre-season, maybe a friendly as well, but they don't actually count on the cap.

If they set foot on the pitch in a competitive game, their entire salary for the season would immediately count on the cap.

Which is why I think we are obviously spending the cap limit (£1m), but I think our playing staff wages (at least until loans started happening) is probably more - ie £1.1m. I think this explains what has happened to Davies, Petersen, Conroy & Brook.

Not Conroy, who has played competitively (sub away at Batley), but perhaps Bates.

That can't be right. Why would we ever sign a raft of players on the basis that we do have to pay their wages, but they can never set foot in a competitive game?

Bates/Brooks didn't develop as planned? Davies/Petersen training stats didn't match their youtube highlights reel? quota?

You get 3 or 4 months with them before the first competitive game of the season.

An early injury then squad reassessment means you're suddenly surplus to requirements?

If for example you're on £40k for the season, but 6months have passed and you've not played, then the opportunity arises for the coach to sign 2 players about April/May time, both on £20k for the next 6months.

The £40k player is effectively benched, taken off the 25man squad that the RFL hold and unless he gets a loan arranged, is going to be paid without playing.

Or maybe I'm just overanalysing this....

It used to be that the cap applied just to the top 25 earners, not sure about now though as that was in SL. I've never heard of it not applying to blokes who don't play, and to be honest it sounds a bit too sensible for the RFL.