I think the belief was that with the talent of players at his disposal Smith should have done better, Saints will regard a semi as good in the context of what they have.

No it clearly wasnt.
but lets not blow Smoke up Holbrook's backside just yet.

the thing that kept Smith in a job was that he believed (and was factually right) that we were just a couple of wins away from getting into the top 8. I guess he had also persuaded the owners/board that this was a reality. When in fact we were truly awful.

Saints were in the same position when they sacked Cunningham.Their owner clearly didnt hold the same view that just another win or two would get them across the line and then after that hope for the best....

they saw a lame horse and shot it. We saw a lame horse and let it try and walk it off.

have Saints turned into the world beaters of past years under Holbrook? No they are just average instead of rubbish they finished 6th with just two losses less than us.

They then somehow climbed from 6th to 4th in the super 8's due largely to the dead rubber nature of some of the games. had it been knock out rugby their season would have been long over.

they won their first game of the super 8's against out of sight Cas. They then lost to all the big clubs Hull Leeds and Wigan they then scrapped a win over Wakey and then beat the two clubs with nothing to play for Hudds and salford.

Had saints got to the final it would have owed more to an astoundingly bad league structure than anything Holbrook has done. I didnt see all the game tonight but it seems to me If James Roby is in the team saints stand half a chance even if Big bird from Sesame st was coaching them.

they were really quite clueless in attack on numerous occasions and even in golden point plodded it up quite poorly.

He has some work to do......

A touch harsh, sc.
Had Cas lost tonight because Percival had his kicking boots on, instead of his wife's stilettos, I wouldn't call Powell a bottler. Let's not forget,Cas are new to this last 4 malarkey at the end of the season, SAINTS ARE BATTLE HARDENED.
That counts for a lot.
When they beat Wakey in the last seconds, a few weeks back, I said I wouldn't put it past them going all the way to the GF. Bar a brain fart from a Saints defender, and crap kicking, they'd be there.

Powell has turned his coaching career around in a couple of years. A bottler? No.He'll get better from tonight's experiences.

Would. I have him at the HJ, though????

No. I think the bloke's as big a bumhole, as his fellow Yarkshiremon, James Lowes

Or the 3rd outcome.

Lets think positive Wires71 we wouldn't want the Smith loyalists to be back on here saying "I told you so" would we.

I've jumped in with both feet already this month and regretted it, so I'm holding off here.

Not sure what you mean by this one?

Following the Wires71 test, Holbrook has failed and Saints will show they are willing to accept mediocrity if they don't sack him and get someone new in the off-season.

Been said earlier, catch up.

Give over. Maybe if he has 8 seasons and still comes up short. Not that Saints would allow that length of time to elapse due to inherent winning culture.

I am sometimes staggered at peoples inability to follow a simple, cogent, argument at times. Please tell me you can tell the difference between 8 years and 6 months.

Just part of the general abuse of Smith now that he has gone. The re writing of history on here could put the former Eastern Bloc to shame.

Where is the re-writing?
Most people are making factual comments. It would be hard to disagree that the squad has been left in a mess and we had a woeful season.

Perhaps people need counselling to accept that fact he's gone and not only that he wanted to go!

^^^THIS^^^

Of course I'm not claiming Holbrook as their messiah. I'm saying he took a bottom four team to the top four in half a season and transformed the way they play. They are invigorated and will almost certainly compete next year at the top. You could even argue that he's done more with them performance-wise than Smith did with us in his first season (despite the cup win). That's not a dig at Smith just a point I'm using.

Holbrook didn't fail to win anything after 5 years of decline, and for those using the argument of 'Saints only did well because of the league structure' well you could say the same about us last year. We were not the best team before the split (Hull were top) and the league was even less competitive last year than it is this year. And our cup run came after easy games against lower opposition, as opposed to Hull who did it the hard way.

I'm not a Smith hater, but I rue the decision to not follow Saints example when it was clear we had bottomed out after the first half of the season and would not recover....

People don't like hearing perceived negativity even if it's the reality. Same in all walks of life. People will avoid it like the plague.

Someone posted yesterday that perhaps Moran is guilty of being too loyal and too friend-like to our head coaches. I think that's accurate and could well be a blind weakness of his. I just hope he's learned from his mistakes next time around.

We need to be ruthless as a club in our quest for success. If the top down culture isn't "only the best will do", then we'll never change our mentality.

Smith has gone now, had he gone mid season we may or may not have been in a better position. We will never know. You can not simply extrapolate what happened at Saints and conclude that the same would've happened to us even if Holbrook was our coach. I now await a cogent counter view.

Of course not. I guess I didn't put my point across correctly:

Had we acted earlier I believe we may have been in a better position to recruit a new coach and rebuild the squad for 2018.

We didn't act. We look to be struggling to get the coach we want. We have lost players. We have not recruited players. We don't even know which players our new coach will want. I believe the failure to act at the time has cost us at least one whole season (201icon_cool.gif.

The best we can hope for is a reintroduction of licensing at the end of next season so our future is assured.

All fair points, but again its guesswork. We don't KNOW what's happening with player recruitment, just because there are no announcements doesn't mean they aren't sorted. Had Smith gone mid season who knows who the new coach would've been. I don't think it was unreasonable to believe that there may be more coaches willing to move at the end of the season than the middle, but that is also a guess.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the argument is pointless on both sides as we are where we are regardless. Let's all just hope Steve Price can attract some quality players and quickly get them to gel.

In all honesty we don't really know the cause of the decline this year. Is it Tony Smith wishing he wasn't here or player discontent ,of which there must have been plenty simmering in the dressing room over the last few seasons. Chris Hicks being displaced in favour of Joel M., Wood & Higham seeing their haciendas, Ben Harrison being airbrushed from the player squad the shabby treatment of Carvell who was as good if not better than most of our current forwards.Players reportedly not seeing eye to eye with the manager . We probably won't know the cause for a few weeks ,if ever ,but we can only give the new coach a clean slate & judge on what differences have come about in 2018.

I think this is one thing us fans, or converted supporters, can all agree on.

We all want the Wire to be successful, we may disagree on the methods, but at heart we want the same thing.

You have both enjoyed his post match interview dross this year then?

My comments were around the fact that JH gave a very honest interview pay match interview in defeat, without coming out with all the external variables ref, training was good, allowed an off week etc which contributed to defeat.

I don't think anyone has. By class I thought you were inferring to his actions and comments towards opposition teams and their players. Which I think he's always been very good at.

Yes he gets repetitive in his after match comments, but worth remembering just because that is what he is communicating externally, doesn't mean he's saying the same to his players when he gets them in on Monday morning.

I actually thought Smith was usually very fair to the opposition in post match.

To be clear, my original post on this thread was praising the post match actions of JH. I was very impressed with the manner in which he took the defeat. A lot of other coaches both in league and other sorts could learn from this guy

Been very impressed with him. In 6 months he's taken Saints from 10th to *should be* Grand Finalists if Percival could kick. Interested to see what he'll be like with a full pre season under his belt.

Were they 10th or 7th? I read back the report of him signing last week, they said 7th, but I guess they could have dropped a few places by the time he arrived in the UK - seem to remember there being a bit of a delay...?

Yes he's done well. I think most Saints fans will be pleased with him given their improvement, given we've not been in the same comp for 2 months I'm not sure whether their style of play has improved, I know they faced much criticism of that under Cunningham.