I heard a lot of negative remarks aimed at him yesterday in Wigan (and even a "Smith out, Cullen in" shout which I HOPE was a Wire being ironic but the fella sounded serious!)

If England get beat next week to make it two failed tournaments in a row will the boss be released to concentrate permanently on his REAL job?

I hope so.

Same here!!!!

Lets hope so.

Then we might actually have someone with a clue managing England

Well, you'd know all about coaches not having a clue being a Saints fan, wouldn't you.....

Get shut. Just look at this squad, England should be sitting pretty.

Yep. Leeds' first title in decades followed by another a couple of years later and Wire's first major trophy in a similar length of time with a 3-0 series win V New Zealand thrown in for good measure.

Tony Smith is clueless.



Leave the unappreciative masses to their own devices boss man (they'll love watching Cullen's England

)and concentrate solely on what matters in 2010.

Master Cartman (he can't be an adult) once again displaying his usual brand of wit and repartee.

You could have Wayne Bennett coaching that England side and it'd be no different....



The England coaching job is for mugs....Trying to live upto the unrealistic expectations of Eddie, Stevo and countless numbnuts on sites like this...



As the saying goes....'You can't polish a turd.....'....

But you can roll it in glitter...

At their best, England can make the final. Unfortunately we haven't see their best so we need a coach who can produce the best out of all 24 players in the squad.

One thing i noticed with Wire this season is that we seemed to be a 2nd half team (might be wrong but just my perception) and maybe it's because TS really analyses the team and works out a game plan for the 2nd half. Possibly what happened last night too ?

Wigan had a spell of being exactly the same, poor in the first half and good in the second.

I asked Brian Noble why he didn't give his half time team talk before the kick off.

He smiled and said "You're not the first person to ask me that."

Maybe sometimes the work you do reaps rewards in the second half. The first half is all about putting traffic in certain directions etc, which has a direct influence on how the second half pans out.

Under Cullen we seemed to be a first half team.
I think there was a season one of the last 3 at Wilderspool (think i read this somewhere) that if you went of 1st half performances only, Wire would have won the league.

What we [wire need to do is bring back Cull. He's in charge 1st half and TS in the 2nd.

if its the end of the road for ts next week i for one will be glad..let someone else coach our 2nd rate national side see how well they do..

A little history lesson.

Mal Reilly, coached a squad containing modern greats such as: Hanley, Offiah, Gregory, Davies and Edwards. He couldn't get a win against Australia.

He went to Australia and won a GF.

Lesson over.

I must have dreamt Melbourne 1992, Wembley 1990, Sydney 1988 etc....

Reillys era was the days of 2-1 defeats to Australia, it wasn't the era of getting smashed out of sight and not even coming close.

Mal Reilly also coached Huddersfield to the wooden spoon in England, as did Tony Smith, and if Reilly was coach of England today, or Wayne Bennett or whoever, they would be presiding over big thrashings at the hands of the Aussies.

My point exactly.

it really dont matteer who we have in charge,the standard of rugby which is coached at SL level. Also has a bearing on the international rugby,it could also say it goes all the way down to grass roots.

I find it surprising that nobody voiced these opinions about TS to this degree until he became our Head Coach, yes there were grumblings i have to admit but is there a coincidence in this?

I did.

I had the "good fortune" to be in the same hotel as the England squad in Townsville last year.

You may joke about Cullen being England coach but im fairly sure he recently was, and oh, he also won a trophy with them IIRC. It's a start.

quite right we played nz at our place...flippfloppi was full back

Smith isn't the coaching guru you lot seem to think he is. His performance with England has been truly terrible. Bobbie Goulding has done a better job in a shorter space of time with the French. They are better organised and more disciplined defensively than we are, which is a farce given the quality of the players they have at their disposal.

But he won the Challenge Cup with Warrington, who were the worst team in the league at the point he took over, and who don't exactly have a long standing pedigree in winning trophies....hence the understandable misconception that he was a coaching guru.

This was perhaps an easier task than winning a few Challenge Cups with the mighty St Helens, as Daniel Anderson did, who promptly won BBC awards and gets hailed by the Saints fans as a 'coaching guru'. It's interesting to look at Anderson's record in international rugby league as coach of New Zealand...which saw him take the Kiwis comfortably down to 3rd place in the pecking order hence him being replaced, whilst his successors promptly delivered the Tri Nations (McLennan) and the World Cup (Kearney).

Even Brian Noble dominated Anderson in the international arena