No doubt at the time but that was 4 whole seasons ago (November 2013) and we have still not replaced him at the time of writing.

It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".

Sandow was a panic buy due to a crap season because we couldn’t develop our promising junior half-back into a first team player. The coaches seem to have been unable to further develop our junior players where most top clubs manage to establish them into their respective first teams quite well. We ended up spending quite a bit of money on transfers fees replacing these juniors, and the bigger-name players who came in seem to have actually gone backwards under Smith and Agar!

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that we kept them 2 seasons too long, despite the relative success of 2016.

Just hope the new team does better with less quality as they’ll need all the home grown talent they can at the moment... Would love to see Patton and Livett do well under Price. Shame we lost Dagger but maybe we have a couple of decent backs still to come through?

Quote ="Captain Hook"It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".'" I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.

Quote ="Captain Hook"It meant that Sandow was brought in which meant that Brown was brought in. I think that covers "disarray".'" I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.

Quote ="Wires71"I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.'" Wasn't Briers' "replacement" Gaz O'Brien? Another that didn't go to well. Sure Myler and GOB were shipped out for Sandow and Gidz

Quote ="Wires71"I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.'" Wasn't Briers' "replacement" Gaz O'Brien? Another that didn't go to well. Sure Myler and GOB were shipped out for Sandow and Gidz

The retirement of Lee Briers caused a fair bit of disruption but i think that is where the mistakes started.
A) It was not like Briers had his career cut shhort at the age of 29. The planning should have been in place anyway.
B) Myler almost immedietly moved to the right edge having spent the previous 3 years on the left edge building cominations with Atkins and others.
C) Sandow was brought in towards the back end of 2015 and he was a left edge player but we knew he was going to take a lot of managing which is fine as long as you can manage the situation
D) Gidley was brought in and given the No1 shirt iirc (previosly held by russell) and i think Ratchford was given the No6 shirt. I know you cant read an awful lot into squad numbers but surely that was an indication of Smiths plans but almost straight away that was effectively reversed when they took to the field.

In my view the recruitment and selection of all of the key pivot positions (1,6,7 & 9) has been a mess for the last 4 or 5 years when Smith knew that Hodgson, Briers, Monaghan were all coming to the end of their playing days at the same time.
I would be happy to go with Brown on the right edge for 2018 backed up by Livett and I hope the rumours about Roberts are true because he is mainly a left edge playmaker backed up by Patton. Roberts is also a goalkicker with a career average of nearly 74% (better than Cameron Smith) which could be a big bonus.
The word Marquee should be reserved for truly great players but the way things are we are not going to attract the big names but i think he may be just what we need.

Quote ="Wires71"I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.'" Although it may be hard to see it... £130k for Brown does state he is the replacement. I'm fairly confident Brown will be a very significant cog for Wire in winning the GF in a years time. Brown only needs a strong pack.

Quote ="Wires71"I understood your point. Sandow was signed nearly 2 years after Briers retired as a replacement for Myler. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/33637952. Brown was a replacement for Sandow. My point still stands, we have not replaced Briers with anyone approaching his quality.'" Although it may be hard to see it... £130k for Brown does state he is the replacement. I'm fairly confident Brown will be a very significant cog for Wire in winning the GF in a years time. Brown only needs a strong pack.

We've not replaced briers in the same way saints haven't replaced long...because it's nigh on impossible to at the minute. These players don't exist on our shores anymore. They died out when briers retired. The best British halfbacks we have at the minute are Williams, Gale and ruddy Sneyd and long and briers were in a different league to all 3. Sandow was a decent attempt and we knew he was a huge risk. I actually agree with Duckie for once in that i think Brown is not as bad as this season has shown and could actually come good.

Also is quade cooper worth a punt? He always looked like a league player playing the wrong game to me.

Didn`t Brown play on the left edge for the Smellies?

That long cut out pass he has was always to the left wing, that I recall?

I could never fathom out why Smith played him on out right edge, when Gidley had played there when we had Sandow

Because Patton is on the left edge

Nail on the head. Deus Dat & ratticus.

With the number of quality players (and leaders) we lost - we were always in for transition season(s). If GOB/Myler or Ratchford/Myler was supposed to be the succession plan, then we should have stuck to our guns and played them, accepting a year or two of improvement time - especially as it was perhaps a year sooner than expected.

Instead, we panicked when we weren't as strong or successful as the previous few years, and messed with our HB paring too often over the next couple of years, chopping and changing them seemingly every couple of weeks, using various combos of Myler/Ratchford/Bridge/GOB/Patten, which left us worse off than if we'd just stuck it out with one pair.

All we needed was to replace Briers with was a HB with a kicking game. You'd never replace his x-factor, but you could replace his field kicking (something I thought GOB had, and would improve with over time). Myler could pass, pull us around the park, run with the ball, and keep the team moving + he was the best supporting HB in the competition. He just needed to be paired with someone who could kick to move us up the field and give us something on the last tackle. But hindsight is 20/20.

Do you think we would have won the 2016 GF with Myler and GOB as our half backs?

2015 was awful for the this, have some confidence and belief stick with a pairing, rather than publicly undermine and show you have no confidence in them by moving a fullback and a centre to keep patching it up.

That to me was when i decided smith needed to go.

we were a couple of points away from getting to the 14 GF with them.

We didn't win the GF in 2016 anyway, so that's kind of a moot point as we'd have been no worse off either way.

But the point that led to this a few posts back was about succession planning (or lack of).

Had we stuck with, say, GOB and Myler for '14 and '15 and they not worked out (2 seasons should be more than enough for that to become apparent), then we could have moved to make a change in one or both positions behind the scenes during the '15 season ready for '16. That would have been far less erratic and knee-jerkey.

14 pages on this bloke,you would think by this stage he had signed or not going to and we can move on.

There's a patten here no one I picking up on post Briers....several halfbacks and multiple combinations later, and we still blame the lost of Lee for our demise...
Some very short memories on here...there were 3x the barren seasons with Briers playing than there was with silverware and for much of that empty period, he played alongside better halfback partners....!

Why so many of you cannot make a connection with our rise and demise of the pack is bewildering!
If we'd have had Morley Carvel Monaghan/Higham Waterhouse Westwood Anderson x2...etc we'd be steam rollering all competitions with backs like Ratchford Patton and Brown.

You make a good point RD, but I was commenting about half backs on a half back thread (I know, what am I thinking?). My point was any succession planning for HB was affected by Briers retirement. I didn't think there could be anything controversial about that...

The club knew that Briers was going to retire mid 2013 not at the end of the season, ok that's when he announced it but the truth was they knew well in advance. That doesn't make the job of finding an appropriate replacement any easier. As Duckie says having a better pack would allow lesser quality halves to perform, just look at Matty Smith and Luke Gale.

Looks like it might be back on, latest from the Titans... www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/spo ... 8f2860e246

Looks like it might be back on, latest from the Titans... www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/spo ... 8f2860e246

Money talks. Would be a very good signing.

A few murmours on twitter this afternoon that he's signing for us. Time will tell.

The Duck quacked... but now whistles!

Anyone think he looks like Mr Tumble? I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Not a bad look a like but not as good as their Chief Executive 'Arthur Smith'?