Wire Quin, I would imagine if a new appointment is made, the club would only consider appointing a senior player as the Manager, such as Rhys Curran, or the likes of Joe Mbu or Rob Powell; essentially an already London based person, and again roll the dice on someone unproven.

I would not want the club that go that way, and thus have refrained from suggesting someone when there appears little chance of the type of manager I want.

The types of options I would like I think you can eliminate.

It is my view that Tony Rea has a good corporate career and would not give that up to work for a fickle leader who has a record of dismissing people which rules him out.

Hendo would be my preferred candidate by a mile, but I am not sure his personal circumstances would permit a return to London. I believe he lives in Warrington and has a partner from St Helens and also his four children are based somewhere which is likely to be in the north.

I also don't think the Hughes father and son want him back, and as I believe a lot of the changes made were in preparation for the son's inheritance, the son's view would be important.

Mystery surrounds the sudden departure of Danny Ward; but if I had to guess I would say he got wind of going part-time and showed his hand after a 50 point hammering and the fickleness of the leadership team of the time saw him axed there and then.

So the sorts of candidates I would like I believe are simply unavailable.

I can't see why a manager of recognised stature and proven ability in the Championship such as John Kear, Richard Marshall or Jon Sharp would come to the club given where things are, though all would be highly suitable.

Anyone who comes in would need to weed out pretty much all the players who have played in the past for either London Skolars or West Wales and the sorts of guys who have debuted at only around the age of 20 and have only ever played for the academy in the past. Very few are capable of more, as I have previously stated, with the fresh cream skimmed off, leaving only the sour cream for us to enjoy.

Henderson has managed out the dross before, and he would be my nomination. He's a ruthless man and he will not offer players more than they are worth, but he isn't going to waste his time fishing with a couple of hundred quid a week maximum wages as his bait, and that might be why Coleman remains.

In my opinion, anyone taking the job would need to be saying to the Hughes family; you are going to need to pony up for 4-6 players, these are the wages needed; we will need to start offering 2-3 year contracts and you are going to need to show me and the players the right commitment, otherwise I would think the manager themselves will have the trapdoor switch pressed on them.

The job cannot be done with what we have; basically a whole bunch of half backs and backs who simply cannot set up or score tries in the Championship. You'd be a mug to want a job which can't be done, lasts less than a year and ruins your reputation.

So, I would hire Hendo, and if not John Kear or Jon Sharp. If the job is strictly part time, Tony Rea would be highly acceptable and he could save the club, but he may have been burnt too many times by Hughes. Joe Mbu would probably be the best of the local candidates, and I believe he would at least have some support from the stands.

They were a very good coaching team, best we've had in a long, long time.

Tony Rea took us to 2 play offs in 3 years.....since then and I include McDermott in this, we've flattered ourselves about being SL standard when we were bottom half 2007-2014/2019.....in TR's case, he found gems like Moran, mclinden, dorn......we even signed a youthful Tommy L before he became a Wigan legend....since then we've recruited/attracted pension seekers like Soward. This is down to the calibre of coaches we've had.....and I suspect Hughes is of the opinion that we have hoards of Louis MS and Clubbs just waiting in the wings.....we don't.
Ward was by far the best London Broncos Coach we had since Tony Rea.

Never been the same since we sacked Tony Currie.

Jumpers for Goal Posts (AKA Chiswick Poly)

Hi, it is difficult to give a definitive answer on who the better manager was between London Broncos managers simply because the assistant has become the manager a lot of times; thus there is not a true separation between eras, for instance

1 Brian McDermott and Rob Powell, with Tony Rea above them
2 Brian McDermott and Rob Powell, without Tony Rea above them
3 Rob Powell and associates such as Mick Howell
4 Tony Rea with a support team of Mike Eccles
5 Joey Grima with a support team of Andrew Henderson and Mike Eccles
6 Andrew Henderson with a support team of Danny Ward; Jamie Langley and Mike Eccles
7 Danny Ward with a support team of Jamie Langley and Mike Eccles, with Tom Tsang doing the reserves
8 Danny Ward with a support team of Tom Tsang and Mike Eccles
9 Tom Tsang and Mike Eccles
10 Jermaine Coleman with a support team of Jy-mel Coleman and Mike Eccles

I would argue that Andrew Henderson was much better at recruitment than Danny and managing within the budget.

One of the key differences at the club over the past 8 years or so was this:

Joey Grima brought through a host of players from the academy into the first team squad, on very competitive wages, of around 30k-40k, very decent for a young inexperienced player. These includes the likes of Joel Wicks, Harvey Burnett, Oscar Thomas and Toby Everett but it is thought the likes of Alex Walker and Matt Davis were thought not to be on this very competitive deal.

Andrew Henderson had difficulty in that he wanted to retain some players from the academy, who by that time might have played 30-50 games but he wanted to pay less than when they started, leading to a bit of an exodus, but he did manage to make very good signings in general, however the squad depth reduced visibly over his tenure. In some ways quite a lot of very good players were on bargain wages.

Danny Ward simply inherited the Henderson squad; his initial additions were of mixed quality - arguably none were an improvement on those from the Henderson days except for Pelissier. In the Super League season he bought well and brought in some very good players, but the longer he lasted the worse a deal he seemed to strike. He also brought through a host of players into the first team squad, but I am not sure the strike rate of quality was as high as could be justified. Danny didn't seem able to retain players, and some who seemed happy to stay were jettisoned such as Ioane and Hellewell which I think was a big error given who was retained or played in their position. I do not think he was perceived as getting value for money from either youth players or experienced in his last season, with a high list of unavailability.

I do not think Hendo would have accepted a situation where a player simply did not want to play on yet left him on the books, as I think Danny seemed to do.

What we don't know is how much influence that Hughes had on retention.

I have heard claims about current and past managers allegedly making remarks about how successful they would be, only to field a comparatively ordinary squad, but if they said what I was told, I would think they would be pushed into it. Like the "Quickly Kevin, will he score?" famous football conversation.

In my view the dream team of all the above combinations was Henderson with Langley and Ward