If Celtic had a free ticket to stay up i'd be slightly nervous but no more.

I'm not in the Noble staying camp anyway, i actually want a change of coach at the end of the season for the reasons you state there but i don't think we can say Noble has overall done a poor job.

He's done the job of making us into a decent team again but he doesn't seem capable of making us into a trophy winning team.

ill give him his first 'season' as he kept us up and im sure we will all be grateful for that. however, since then, we have played possibly the worst brand of rugby in the SL with 1 or 2 brilliant games

its just not good enough and i really dont see any reason to give him a new contract unless we either win something or get to a final this year

I am saying he has done a good job for us, it does not mean he is the man to take us forward, I just feel people forget quickly what he has done for our club. I do however agree with your points in the second paragraph, I am just trying to defend him as I say support the people who are here.

Brian Noble wanted a new deal after beating the scousers at murrayfield , and i was still buzzin from that win that i thought yeah we need to give the guy a real crack at the job. But since then we have yet again gone backwards and he's still dining out on murrayfield , he says he cant wait forever but we need to establish whether he is the man to take us forward. To me Nob doesnt seem to be in sync with the fans , his treatment of the youngsters , lack of enthusiam and passion for the club and reliance on australian players has fustrated most of us. Roberts , Riddell , Smith etc are given all the time in the world and their errors arent pointed out in his interviews yet he seems very critical of ainscough and the lads confidence looks shot. Noble has took us to 7th , 6th , 4th in the table while at wigan , is playoff record is good but do we really want to watch a team that plays well for the only a month of the season?

I don't see how anyone can say they see improvement. Our current win/loss ratio stands at 40%, worse than at any time in the last 3 years.

What's more, Noble is saying the same things now that he was saying 3 years ago.

This is a quote from the last time we played Salford in the CC:

19th May 2006



Doesn't that look familiar?

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Why do some people have such short fecking memories?!?

We were BOTTOM OF THE LEAGUE, destined to nothing but NL1 (as it was at the time) Dad was programing his sat nav to navigate to the likes of barrow, doncaster and batley.

He came in and we stayed up, nothing short of a miracle. We then finished third in the league, the next season, and then matched it the season after, spending the majority of the season in the top 4.

Explain how that is not an improvement? Ok, so performances arn't fantastic at the minute, and personally I don't think he can take us any further, but seriously, how can you say that? (btw, your not the first and you wont be the last, not a personal attack, im just sick of reading how we haven't improved when we clearly have)

If that really is from May 2006 that is shocking! Shows just how far we have come.

From him taking over we have improved, since the start of his first full season we have not its simple really.

We were vastly underachieving when he came in, any coach that would have come would have kept us up. No doubt in my mind.

whats a "cathartic meeting"?

is that when they pick the next pope?

No Brian. The Wigan fans are saying 'Hang on a minute, Brian. We're currently out of playoff spots in 9th Position, having played a game more than everyone else apart from Quins, Bradford & Celtic where we have played two games more'.

When it comes to trophies I'm as patient as the next man, but its there for all to see.....WE'RE GOING BACKWARDS.....!!!!!!!!

This part must be a bit of a concern...............................He added
"I'm still in the process of building a team and it can take between three and five years before you can deliver a truly successful team.
That's a bit of a cop out for me. It's easy to say that now, as he has won naff all.( why didn't he say that at first).
Can you imagine the uproar from the fans if he had said on his 1st day in the job, 'Yeah pehaps we'll be an ok team in 5 years time.'
Imagine theis scenario, Noble goes to Aus at the end of this season, Lam, Edwards, Farell or whoever takes over and says, ' don't worry we will be there or thereabouts in 2015.

Indeed. Its taken Justin Morgan considerably less time to take Hull KR up from NL1 to 2nd in Super League

Our team was pretty much NL1 when Noble took over.

People are overplaying the relegation fight and did at the time too. I'll get slated but I reckon we would have just about stayed up even if he hadn't came. If Millward had stayed and Dobson and Fielden had arrived we'd have definitely stayed up. If Noble had came and done nothing different to Millward but we'd brought Dobson and Fielden in I reckon we wouldn't have done much different. It was the new coach effect + a couple of very good players that kept us up rather than Brian Noble's ability IMO. Otherwise he'd have kicked on from there, which he hasn't. The players have done little for half the season, then done just enough to make the play offs in the next half then had a couple of good games in the play offs until they meet a good team and then we get beat them and the cycle starts again (see Bradford '01, St Helens '02, Bradford '03, St Helens and Leeds '04, Leeds '07 and Leeds '08.). It's been the same since Endacott left unless you count a shock win against St Helens in the challenge cup final (don't forget they were massive favourites and beat us 19-0 not long before the game). If you want any proof that we don't give 100% effort in early league games watch the challenge cup games around the same time (bar the one's since Noble came to be fair, we even got beat by the easy teams in those) we're a different team!

Although i do not think we would have stayed up had Millward remained in charge i agree wholeheartedly with the rest of the post.

It's difficult to argue that we would have done, to be honest. 80% of the problem was that the players were no longer talking to Millward.

You can't reverse a breakdown in communication like that easily.