The Bulls squad Noble had was never the best squad of players in the league. Saints had a far better squad. Noble's era coincided with Saints at their absolute peak with Cunningham, Sculthorpe, Long, Wellens, Albert, Britt and so on. I think Saints underachieved in that era because Millward wasn't up to it.

Noble won three SL titles in five years, two World Club Challenges and a Challenge Cup which made Bradford the most successful side of the era, which was a good return for a good bunch of players but not a great bunch. There were guys in that team like Naylor, McAvoy, Shane Rigon, who you would not have put amongst the very elite. Their best back was Michael Withers for a while!

Vainakolo, Hape, Henry Paul?

Interesting comments from nobby on the bbc before the game today, felt like hi was unfairly sacked and wouldn't comment more because he needed to speak to his lawyers...

Watching the 2001 grand final the commentators reference Bradford as big game bottlers. It seems it wasn't until Noble took over that they really got over the hump and became a champion team. They had won the cup the previous year under Elliot.

With us he turned the team at the bottom of the table when he took over into the third best team in the league. We did underachieve though as shown by Maguire.

Then he took over Crusaders and made the respectable and qualified for the playoffs. He's not had long enough at salford to prove anything either way but from his history i'd say he certainly has been a good coach, not great and he may have had his time.

The Doc is salfords saviour but he will also be there downfall with erratic decisions like this.

We all Noble wasnt the answer but what is needed is someone with a huge pair of Balls to stand up to the Doc and that IMO will only come from the NRL whos coaches have arrogance beyond belief but can back it up , Madge / Leneghan springs to mind

He didn't make us the 3rd best team in the league, he got us to be a semi final team in the playoffs by having a couple of good wins at the end of the year. In the league we were inconsistent and finished 6th, 4th and 6th in his three full seasons. We were decent in knockout games (cup and playoffs) but could not win in semi finals, we were poor in the league.

Noble is now a stabilising coach, not a championship winning one. He may have been able to win pots once but not anymore and hasn't been able to for at least 7 years. Given time (3 full seasons like he had at Wigan) he would have been able to stabilise Salford as regular 5th to 8th place finishers and would have set the platform for someone else to then take over and advance them to challenge for honours. His signings seem to suggest the start of such a process, the likes of Meli, Morley and the other older heads would lift them above the bottom four and then as players retired/were deemed a weaker link they would be replaced with better and more long term players. Unfortunately for Noble (and possibly for Salford depending on how Harris fares) Dr Koukash was not willing for whatever reason to give him the time needed to gradually build.