I bet there will be a few rings twitching in the back room too ,some of the boys could be joining the dole queue.

I'm talking about over 10/15/20 years, not just the last few. Leeds have won Super League with 3 different coaches in the last 13 years. Wigan went through 7 or 8 coaches in the mid 80's to late 90's. Saints probably haven't won as much as the other two out they go through coaches and are always there or thereabouts; more so than us anyway.

We've got fans wetting the bed because we've had a decent coach who has finally won us a couple of pots and can't see the likelihood of us ever winning anything again now that he's left.

Sad day really but one that's been coming for months now if not the last 3 years be interesting to see how the team perform in the next 2 games now this decisions been made

I hope to God that Moran's has had" irons in the fire" since early May, regarding players and coach. ATEOTD, he's a business man, and he won't want to see it go down the pan.

Smith (for me) has been a dead man walking since May. His attitude has stunk, performances from the players too.Yet the regularity of "Smith Bingo" in press conferences became a joke. The things he mentioned are HIS responsibllity, but nothing changed, week in, week out.

We had more chance of plaiting snot than us getting Top 4, so the ignominy of not even getting Top 8 was his final nail in the coffin. I don't think Moran's wanted to take the risk of a new coach for the makeweight 8, so he trusted him to get us through. Limping over the line, with dross performances has just killed us all. Players, fans and board.

I can't be ar5ed looking at who's contact runs out in October,. I just hope a lot of them are gone.

Oh, and Clark, Cooper and a few others to have a long look at themselves in the mirror. I'd expect a damn site more from an ex Mos and someone returning from Oz with a big reputation. Carrying knocks or not, they've stunk, and bear culpability to the season's predicaments.

Crack on, Wire

Saints sacked 3 coaches who WON the super league title

Well exactly, with smith doing well but failing to win the GF and this last season....i hope that one positive to come from this is that we develop a ruthless streak to finally get us over the line. We have everything else in place bar the attitude/winners mentality of a big/successful club...and that goes for a large number of our fans too.

The funny thing is, there's a lot of Warrington fans bemoaning the thought of a Maguire or Wane type character having us playing boring rugby.

As much as I have loved the entertainment this Warrington post-'09 era has provided, I would swap it in an instant for the Wigan trophy haul during the same period. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. I like the idea of being Champions - is that so bad?

I'd be interested to hear whether Wigan fans would do the opposite? Let's give a different coaching approach a chance to work.

Exactly. The public outpouring of grief and hand wringing on FB and WG shows the problem in a nutshell. We need to be harder. 8 Years and Money with the single target of winning the GF. The fact we lost 3 finals is neither here nor there. Thanks Tony for the lovely rugby 2009 - 2012 but sorry, you failed to achieve the key objective.

??? Wane has got Wigan to 4 Grand Finals in a row and won 2 of them! McD won a treble in 2015 and has them safely in the playoffs for 2016.

If Tony has achieved that we would not be replacing him. But he didn't, so we did.

I think we all want both but to swap trophies for nothing is like dumping Nicole Scherzinger for Susan Boyle.

I started watching Super League seriously after a friend Wire fan invited me to a couple of games in 2011; whether I would still be a fan six years on if the rugby that year hadn't been so damn good and exciting I really don't know. I can of course understand the calls for a more hard-nosed and trophy-focussed approach, but I give Tony Smith credit for a style of rugby that won over at least this fan of the other code. I know he had to go by the end but from meeting him with my young son I also know he is a very decent man and I wish him all the best.

Look at what I was responding to and then you will see why Wane was referred to.

Load of rubbish. The 'single target' was not winning the GF: in 2009 we went crackers winning a semi-final against Wigan. To win the final was enough (at the time) to satisfy any Wire fan under 40 who had never seen they like. Only after retaining the cup (first Wire team ever), a first table topping in over a generation, another cup and a grand final appearance did the 'single target' become winning the GF.

To suggest Smith failed is ridiculous. He made Warrington not just contenders, but winners of major trophies: that was the key objective. You look a bit daft with statements like that IMO.

Bet your life after the two cc wins the main aim was to win a GF, something he fsiled to do. I actually believr even TS himself sees not winning it as a big failure

Spot on, rf

Blowing a 14 point lead, conceding 30 unanswered points in 2013 merely underlines this. We bottled it, that night. We switched off, the moment Monaghan went off injured. By the time Ratchford went off, we were already "rabbits in the headlights".

Professional, hard nosed teams don't do that.
That's why Leeds, Wigan, Saints and Bradford have a stranglehold on the GF.
The new coach needs to be RUTHLESS. Not a glorified social worker

That 2013 final was when i first started to doubt TS. You see the likes of wigan, saints and leeds overcome adversity in big games....it even inspires them to perform better and they get organised quickly. Our reshuffling in that final was absolutely shambolic and we seeemed rudderless and to be making it up as we went along. It was very, very poor on the spot management.

Quote ="NtW"Load of rubbish. The 'single target' was not winning the GF: in 2009 we went crackers winning a semi-final against Wigan. To win the final was enough (at the time) to satisfy any Wire fan under 40 who had never seen they like. Only after retaining the cup (first Wire team ever), a first table topping in over a generation, another cup and a grand final appearance did the 'single target' become winning the GF. To suggest Smith failed is ridiculous. He made Warrington not just contenders, but winners of major trophies: that was the key objective. You look a bit daft with statements like that IMO.'" In 2009 at the last home game of the season Tony took the microphone after the game and said that "next season we will be going for both" Even as late as last year Smith goes on record to state that we are aiming for the treble. www.skysports.com/rugby-league/n ... -cup-final To suggest this club's main objective was not winning a GF in the 8 years since his appointment then cannot be correct. Like it or not Smith failed in this objective. On the plus side that team in 2011 was the best I have seen in 37 years of watching and will always be grateful to Tony for that. I think his tenure can be looked as as successful overall. But it's a shame he didn't leave the club and squad in a better condition than he found it, with the GF monkey off our back.

Quote ="NtW"Load of rubbish. The 'single target' was not winning the GF: in 2009 we went crackers winning a semi-final against Wigan. To win the final was enough (at the time) to satisfy any Wire fan under 40 who had never seen they like. Only after retaining the cup (first Wire team ever), a first table topping in over a generation, another cup and a grand final appearance did the 'single target' become winning the GF. To suggest Smith failed is ridiculous. He made Warrington not just contenders, but winners of major trophies: that was the key objective. You look a bit daft with statements like that IMO.'" In 2009 at the last home game of the season Tony took the microphone after the game and said that "next season we will be going for both" Even as late as last year Smith goes on record to state that we are aiming for the treble. www.skysports.com/rugby-league/n ... -cup-final To suggest this club's main objective was not winning a GF in the 8 years since his appointment then cannot be correct. Like it or not Smith failed in this objective. On the plus side that team in 2011 was the best I have seen in 37 years of watching and will always be grateful to Tony for that. I think his tenure can be looked as as successful overall. But it's a shame he didn't leave the club and squad in a better condition than he found it, with the GF monkey off our back.

You said the club's "single target" for 8 years was winning the GF, and used Smith's quote that "we will be going for both" as your 'proof'



I don't dispute that Smith failed to win a GF (!), and I'm pretty sure he will see this as a failure on his part. But I think you need to get over this obsession with the GF. Warrington were a successful team under Smith despite not winning a championship.

Edit: posted before you changed your original post, but I still find your argument incoherent (in one post you say he failed in his single objective, and in another reckon his tenure was successful?!?)

The Leeds - Salford double weekend should have been the absolute final straw. In the raw emotion of the moment I'd have probably done it sooner still, to be honest. But Wakefield pretty much confirmed the inevitable.

Cockle-warming that we wanted to let him down gently, but the result is that we are likely to have another "transitional year" to go with 2014 and 2015.

Brought more success to this club than anyone before him. Took us from slightly above average to completely mixing it and sometimes dominating the big few.

Couldn't quite take us to GF glory but 3 appearances, 4 challenge cup appearances, winning 3, and 2 league leaders shields isn't a bad haul from what we had ever had in the same amount of time. Takes us to within 80 minutes of all 3 pieces of silverware one year and then out the door the next.

Shame it had to end this way. Only had 1 bad season in his tenure but it was free fall. Thanks for everything Tony! Good Luck.

I still think a timely announcement or two from the club hierarchy could have saved a lot of fan unrest this year & I would like to think that if there are any evident problems in the dressing room or the back room then they will be dealt with before 2018 & any wrong doers flushed out.

Smith's biggest mistake that night, though, was selecting Ratchford over Hodgson. His cool, experienced head, not to mention his skills in opening up the opposition defense, were badly missed that night.

I don't know about dominating the big few. We had some individual results over the years but they could all say the same.

The trophy haul and finals we have been to have been more than we've ever had, so we've got to be grateful for that but we're still only the 3rd most successful club during Smith's time here. With the squad and money at our disposal, I'd argue that it should have been better.

There's been more than 1 bad season and getting to the Challenge Cup final and Grand Final last year really did mask the issues. I know Sandow tailed off through the season but without him (and Gidley to some extent) we shouldn't have been within a couple of play of winning the lot.

We may never see another team as exciting as the 2011/12 team but we've faded badly since then due to poor recruitment and some strange man management.