I would be surprised if any of the stuff was news to the Board, after all didn't Harrison say many of the same things on his arrival?

The only news should be the fitness of the team and the tactics employed by the previous coach.

As for Simms I would have thought this is something for the baord and Matt, if they are happy then it would be great if fans would let it lie for next season.

To be honest here. Steve Simms appears to be mentioned in our forum an awful lot. Now I really am "out of the loop" here when it comes down to the day to day running of our club.

If you have to put personal differences to one side, could anyone tell me why this man should be appear to be vilified so continuously and so often by, what I would like to think are very tolerant fans?

I give you my word here: I'm NOT playing "Devils advocate", I simply don't have enough contact through geographical reasons on a regular basis.

I really hope that this current and immediate future period will be recognised as "The Matt Parish era".

If our new coach is "direct", honest, forthright and so on, and is responding to the years of mediocrity that has been our stock in trade in the past, then we should recognise that this is exactly what Aussies are famous for.

And I should know having more Aussie relatives than Poms.

This guy is like a breath of fresh air. I think Daz, (Michigan red) put it pretty well in his post when he stated "wake up and smell the coffee".

And to use another modern USA franchise catchphrase.................I'm loving it!

Bit of a question about Simms. Is it right that he was brought in to take some of the workload of Tarry, leaving Mr Tarry to concentrate mainly on the stadium project? If so, now the stadium project is almost complete, is there still a need for a Director of Football? Or is this wide of the mark?

You'd think that at present somebody (CEO?) must have it within their role to manage the (Willows) stadium - so to sort insurance, liaise with the authorities, source and manage utility use, ensure that health & safety is complied with (facility wise), arrange stewarding, organise for maintenance and repairs etc. All that burden is removed at the new place by the stadium management company.

SS negotiates the contracts I don't think it will be hard to agree a deal with himself...unless he asks for a pay rise

He was brought in to help Steve McCormick,after twelve games Steve got the sack.The rest is history.

No, he wasn't. His role initially was to change the culture of the club signing overseas players without ever seeing them play or researching their recent past about form or injuries. He was brought in by JAW after the spectacular failures of Carige and the Corvo brothers. IIRC, one of Simms first contributions to our overseas signings were Darren Brown and Bobby Thompson who were a marked improvement on what had come before.

Pretty sure he was brought in as an experienced head as the board felt steve Mac would benefit from having someone who had been a coach in the top league before! then I think his role changed!

Don't think so, his brief was to utilise his contacts in Oz and visit there on scouting missions right from the get-go. It may be that it was because Steve Mc had no substantive contacts in the NRL or even the country RL set up over there that led to Steve Simms being employed by the Chairman. I spoke to Simmsy for an hour about his role when he'd just joined the club (in the Walkabout actually, I was there on my works Xmas do and he was there on Salford's Xmas do. He'd got there early and was stood on his own waiting for Ian Millward to turn up, so I took the opportunity and struck up a conversation). It's a fair amount of time ago now but even then he said his role was to help source and negotiate the overseas players terms for joining us and help with player welfare - no coaching involved and he didn't want to be a coach either as far as I can recall.

fair enough! our recruitment before him was shocking even tho we have had a few turkeys it has mainly improved 10 fold. Walkabout of all the venues hey!!

and 6 hours later memory erased

Perhaps this could be made a sticky for the poor people on here who suffer from chronic Simmsophobia.

To be fair, we were only there for a cheap beer before we went to the V&A hotel for posh nosh and ridiculous beer prices!!

I can recall most of that conversation actually along with some pretty awful 'dad' dancing later on after several scoops too many!!

Amen to that, matey.

But just make sure nobody mentions signing Borgese off youtube, or the crocked Bailey, or paying top dollar to Jeremy Smith...

Or letting the aussie players have a clause in their contract saying they don't have to return to training til January, much to the frustration of our new head coach..........

I may be wrong, but weren't they signed by Andy Gregory? I'm sure I remember Brown and Hudson Smith playing in a televised cup game at home to Sheffield the year after they beat us in the semi. Was Simms with us as long ago as 1999.

No

To which bit?

I think Iain is bang on the money there. Had to think twice about it, but I'm sure Brown made his debut in the 16-6 revenge victory at home vs Sheffield, live on grandstand. In our first Joe Bloggs kit.

Top player was Brown. Him, Deadman, Jim Smith and Jason Nichol stand out in that era for me, I especially remember Skull smoking a cig in the Variety Centre, at the entrance near Weaste Lane on the ground side, and it was at that point I realised we weren't as professional as we should be as a club, hopefully that will now change.

You forget don't you it all blurs into one alcoholic dream for me was it not john Harvey?

Harder stuff than that if you caught a few of them on a night out.

Sorry Iain - He wasnt with us in 1999

Just shows how memories get muxed up! Thinking back now it must have been Xmas 2003 that I spoke to Simmsy and a quick google search revealed that for the 2004 season we had struck a deal for Dane Carlaw (but that eventually didn't happen) and Sean Rutgerson was removed from our overseas quota because of his SA roots. I can't remeber who else we'd signed that year.

In terms of signing Borgese from Youtube, perhaps things have slipped since he came on board, who knows? The Bailey signing surely must have been down to McRae's say so - i.e. McRae says he wants him and Steve makes the numbers work?

Finally, the clause in the contract about the overseas players coming back later. I've been doing some thinking about that and wondered whether it was a deliberate negotiation point, i.e. we say to a prospective sigining 'look, we haven't got the money to pay you the same rates as the big boys but if you sign with us you're guarenteed a longer break back home in the off season.' I know that's probably self-defeating but it may explain why it was done. If it isn't a negotiation point and we're paying the same or nearly the same as other clubs then I can understand why Parish has seen his a*rse about it!