Just looking at the SL table and the performances of British coaches. The only two to make the play-offs are experienced coaches who have both won silverware before (Noble and Kear), whereas the three 'rookie' (notice use of inverted commas) coaches of McNamara, McDermott and Agar all missed out.

Looking at the other teams that missed out, Warrington were part coached by a rookie British coach before Smith came in and won them the CC, whilst Celtic and Salford were both recently promoted and couldn't really be expected to have done much better.

Coincidence?

Seems to me that going for an Aussie coach seems to be a bit of a no brainer... Is Noble the only homegrown coach to have won the GF in the SL era (plus Hanley!)? Whilst the likes of McNamara, McDermott, Powell, Sharp, Cullen etc have all looked like the great hopes of British coaching none have won anything of note.

So should Bradord's next coach be an antipodean?

There may be truth in what you say.

A lot of people also believe that Noble's success was on the back of the groundwork started by Brian Smith (and to a lesser extent Matthew Elliott).

Unless Noble pulls it out of the hat in 2009 it may be further proof of this.

In answer to your question if McNamara goes I fully expect an Australian to take over.

I suppose the league table finishing positions nevertheless prove that McNamara is the best young English coach in SL

True, such as it is.

I see now. Macca is crap because he's English. Lack of ability has nothing to do with it

I actually don't believe a lot of people do. Certainly nobody who knows at least a bit about the Bulls. For one thing, Noble was himself an integral part of "the groundwork"; he wasn't parachuted in from Zog. For another, many people steadfastly maintain that Elliott can't coach and never could (I'm not among them btw), and that Smith "has never won anything" (true to this day) so given the fact Smith was only at the club 2 minutes, it seems a bit generous to award him the credit for many years of huge success.

If not, he has a remarkable physical similarity.

Well, I suppose if anyone, you should know

I am indeed an expert on ugly critters - see the smaller one in my avatar.

Nobody's mentioned his avatar in the last five minutes!