=#0000FFLondon coach Rob Powell claimed patience was the key for his young players to continue their progress to becoming steady Super League players.

More than half of his squad for this game were from London and he was proud of their efforts.

"There's a reality to what happened," said Powell.

"We had eight first-team players out injured, and nine London players in our 17-man squad.

"If you look at the tries they scored, it was around our centres and wingers who are young, inexperienced and from London.

"It's our job to coach them up, but if you take eight players out of any Super League team they are going to struggle.

"We missed all the eight players who were missing but we're not making excuses.

"The reality is that we need to be patient.

"They haven't been playing since they were six or seven like the Hull KR players have.

"We have to speed up that process as quick as we can."

Bizarre ! Last week they were young and inexperienced, this week young and inexperienced and from London. I give up. Need I say it but POWELL OUT.

Clubb out injured too, possibly needing an op. as if wes didn't know it already the season is over

Mr Powell is the one who is young and inexperienced! He should not be blaming the players but resigning. Other teams have injuries - HKR for instance and they still beat us by 30 points. He is a joke coach!

I can see us sliding down the slope next week!

Of the young Londoners Kieren Dixon stood out today, looked sharp, very quick, bit shaky under the high ball though. Scored one and nearly created another for himself out of nothing.
Heard a bit about Sargison but he didn't do much today.

Interesting slant on coaching up, when is this going to end in positive results? The season is over with no chance of top 8 finish.

Would happily lose every game by a point if we looked competitive.

That's all we ask for! but that second half this afternoon..........................

Anyway. No coach should be blaming academy players for the team's inability to win an away game in over a year and throwing the youth players under the bus is a disgrace.

Anyway. No coach should be blaming academy players for the team's inability to win an away game in over a year and throwing the youth players under the bus is a disgrace.

Final nail in the coffin for me

Must have run out of things to say and people to blame, what a complete waster, and now has finally lost any ounce of credibility he had left.

I have given him the benefit of the doubt on this site in a couple of posts previously, but you have to say after this statement he is clueless, and completely out of his depth.

I have heard too many things in the last few weeks from within the club, that just back up what a mess the club is in, you have to question why as a professional club/business you would run it in such unprofessional and rudderless manner.

Sorry the whole club needs a complete overhaul from top to bottom, off and on field management, coaching staff, it is just laughable, its on an out of control downward spiral.

No wonder clubs in the championship are fuming over a 14 team superleague and 3 year licenses, its a joke when you run it this badly and stay in

Our squad appears to be not good enough. End of. To give you an idea. No matter who people think we have playing over there, we have only about 3 players in the whole squad that can play first grade in Oz.

For years we've gone on about having London youngsters coming through. Most would not be up to play SL in the UK. That's an unfortunate reality. Same applies here to U20s and even reserve graders. But in London some may not have been playing RL since they were 5 like over here. This will change over time thanks to the hard work of the people at the London Broncos.

Strength of depth and quality of first choice have once again had an effect. It is however the coach that will always get the boot first.

I wouldn't know if he's a good coach or not as I've never been coached by him or worked with him. Has anyone on here?

The squad is good enough not to be at the bottom.

You only have to look at what a difference McGuire made at Wigan without bringing in new players.

What does Powell say to the player today at training. He will be round shouldered, monotone, with no new ideas. How will that work?

If I were a young London player who'd just been blamed for his failings, I know what I'd say to him.

It's a better squad than Widnes, Wakefield, Cas and Salford have.

And how's McGuire going at the 12th place Rabbitohs? Is he a great coach?

Is Australian coach Tim Sheens a great coach with his 13th place Wests Tigers?

Course they can coach, it all swings in roundabouts. Someone will always finish bottom. I just have bucket loads more empathy for coaches since I've been involved in a small part in the game over here.



Out of interest. Does anyone remember where we were tipped to finish this season?

some said 4th and a lot said in the top 8

What about the bookies?

I said fourth and still stand by that statement. SL this year is rubbish and the teams that finish 4-8 will be fairly ordinary sides.
No reason why a team spending to the cap shouldn't be looking to top that list.

Dave Woods - top 8, perhaps top 4: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/16786972 Bookies - 10/11th: www.bigbettingblog.co.uk/rugby-l ... 12-preview

Dave Woods - top 8, perhaps top 4: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/16786972 Bookies - 10/11th: www.bigbettingblog.co.uk/rugby-l ... 12-preview

Andy Wilson of The Guardian said 11th, Brian Carney 10th and Dave Woods changed his mind from possible 4th and play-offs to 9th!

Don't remember any pundits saying 4th (other than the Woods aberration).

Must admit I was hopeful of 8th but no higher, as I percieve there to be half a dozen clubs with better strength in depth.

Way things stand, I will be pleased if we can make 12th.

I still maintain that Super League has a strong top 6; then a gap to both Hulls, Bradford, London; then a smaller gap to Salford, Cas, Wakefield; then open water to Widnes.

At this stage of the year, the 2012 Broncos squad should be within 2 wins of the top 8 and conceding fewer than 25 points per game. That ought to have been par. It would have kept us speccies interested (and mostly supportive).

As it is, the rest of our league games are friendlies and we have a Cup run to look forward to that ends just as soon as we draw a Super league team.

I was hopefull of eighth only for same reasons as DSWG. However I never realised Witt was such a poor tackler and so many others would be the same. In the centre of the park we are defending better but out wide we are awful. I do wonder if the coaching staff are doing their homework on the opposition and targetting their weakness's and pattern of play (as others do us) as HKR have a defense as poor as ours but we didn't seem to know how to attack them it or what HKR were going to do when they got the ball.

We have a team which is underperforming. While the players need to share the blame we have a coach who has no experience and it is now well beyond a joke that he is still in charge.

Ok, so assuming that Warrington, Wigan and Leeds are the top 3, then you're saying you think the Broncos squad is better than Saints ? Huddersfield ? Hull ? Catalans ?

That's not optimistic, it's delusional !



Genuine best-case optimism would have said a maximum finish of 8th, with all the above clubs having a clearly stronger squad than London (spending up to the cap isn't all that great if you have to spend twice as much to get a mid-ranking player than a northern club, because said player doesn't want to leave his mum's cooking).

Guarded optimism would have said that Hull KR and Bradford had similar standard squads, so anywhere between 8th and 10th would be doing well.

Pessimism put Broncos alongside Wakey, Cas and Salford in 10th-13th. Widnes a clear 14th.

Never 4th. Never in a million years. Not with this squad.