Who got him on board though? would it be the same person thats helped put the club in a financial mess.


I think it might.

Last year we did not earn the 8th place it was ours by default. A year on and some of the posters on here are talking about what Agar has achieved. Achieved !!! he has taken a retrograde step and we are now in a worse position than last year. Last year he had the excuse that the team he was fielding was not of his choice! well fast forward to 2013 and he did make choices and most of his choices have not done well at all. So what's to be done? well why not do what we always do and say well "next year we will be better". How will it be better with no signings and the current squad have been playing together for nearly 24 months with no improvement, not as individuals, but as a team. We want men of iron not men of straw.

Agar to get an extension has got to be some sort of wind up.

Would like to think that with the shuffle round in the boardroom, with a chairman, who someone mentioned is an accountant and hopefully knows a bit about RL, would not be handing out 2 year contracts to a coach who has a year left and is steering us down the table.

It's worth mentioning that the only news of an extension for Agar has come from his spoof Twitter account, Sir Richard Agar; this is the same spoof account who claims to shave his plums before each home game, so it has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

As I mentioned previously, come match day, it is not Agar that drops the ball, misses the tackle and doesn't kick correctly. Ultimately, if the players made no errors and looked eager then I would blame Agar but currently it is the players that are giving away the position and costing us games, not the coach!

You are right, it isn't Agar that misses tackles, drops passes and kicks poorly. Unfortunately when you play players out of position, the likelyhood of these things happening increases.

If he'd of thrown young Goulding or Kay in their and they had bad games you would still be slating him, sometimes you can't win!

Goulding and Kay are young lads developing. I can accept mistakes from them, what i find hard to swallow is seasoned pros playing like juniors. We had nothing to lose yesterday, should have given Goulding more of a game and it would have increased our kicking options.

Our kicking options have been poor all year no matters whos playing.

Yep, that's true. So would it have hurt to have a change and not let players think they are automatic choices?

Total overreaction imo, he came in at a difficult time and fashioned a top 8 finish with a backs against the wall mentality. We didn't transform into a top 8 team overnight, we are still about where we should be. I think a lot of people under rate what we did last year

This year, not so good but we've come close in a lot of games that bar some handling errors and a rub of the green I feel we could have pinched.

He does have his failings as you suggest, I cant get my head around his interchange policy and I disagree with him about Washy being a stand in half back, but I at least think he deserves at least another year to see if he can get any more out of the squad. It's easy to look down the road, envious of the success DP has brought to Cas, but they have endured a torrid, torrid time under Millward and who's to say we wouldn't pick a stinker like that?

Classic second season syndrome.

Playing someone in a different position does not render them useless at passing, catching or kicking, these are basic RL skills that every player needs regardless of their position. People need to start blaming the players for the errors, not the coach!

Ultimatley the coach keeps picking those same players to keep doing the same errors.The one thing we have had this season and thats having Sykes injured and for me thats been a big deciding factor.We need to be looking at a class stand off for the future to help Smith out or a class scrum half and move Smith to Stand off.As for Agar he appears to baffle us all with his selections and use of the subs bench to me its not the sign of a good coach when we are creating nothing and the one player he brings in to help sort this is sat on the bench apart from the last 15 mins

Was talking to rich yesterday. I said I think we're 3 players short of a guaranteed top 8 finish to which he agreed. He recognises the fact that t smith hasn't played as well as last year but for me the reason for that is obvious ie no settled half back partner like he had in Sykes last season. All our averages are up on last year so even though we haven't got as many points on the league table we have performed better overall. He came to do a job and has worked hard at it. He doesn't want to see it all drop to pieces. I know some of you think it's broken already but in my opinion were still fixing up after the administration period and its going to take time to build to where we want to be. As I said on another thread nows the time to get behind the club and the team.

Team Selection???? Our squad isn't big enough to be dropping players all the time, if he puts a youngster in and he gets ripped to shreds by the opposition - you'll blame Agar.

Who has been ripped to shreds. It certainly wasn't Cowling.

I said IF.

Appologies I missed the if, and no, I wouldnt blame Agar for trying out a kid. If they get ripped to shreds they'll have done no worse then a few of the senior blokes this year

For example rather than Lee Smith playing at 6 last Sunday I would've been encouraged had Agar selected either Kay or Goulding to partner Tim Smith. If it didn't work then so be it.

I reckon Agar would've got more slack from the supporters had he gone down that route as opposed to using Washbrook at 6 for two weeks on the trot.

I'm not saying it is MORE credidible but it was in the League Weekly too.

Glad someone gets the point. Kay and Goulding are natural stand offs. You lose your stand off, so just replace with a stand off. Before Sykes was injured we were playing something like, he gets injured and the team has 2 or 3 positional changes instead of one.After Bradford loss, not very likely that we were going to make the 8, so give the fringe players a go. Annakin not been seen for ages, perfect opportunity to play him til end of season. Or does the size of the contract decide who is better than who?

I don't really agree with this.
In principle I would always play players in their correct positions.

In practise you can't always do that.
In my opinion Agar decided that Goulding or Kay would have been targetted if started against Leeds or Bradford. Two important games that could have made a massive difference to our fortunes this year.
Playing Washbrook in hindsight stunted our creativity but it improved our defense considerably.
He decided it was better to do that.

It doesn't mean he doesn't rate the kids
It doesn't mean he should be sacked on the strength of the decision
It is just one of those decisions that he has to make when short on numbers.

I remember us playing Morton and Handfort when both made a mistake on tv. The 'fans' rounded on them and their confidence went completely.
He possibly tried them in training and decided they weren't ready yet, and protected them until they are.

I don’t think it took any major hindsight to come to the conclusion that Washbrook would offensively offer nothing at 6, if it wasn't obvious before the first Leeds game it would've been patently obvious afterwards.

With respect to opposition targeting the young players, half backs are always are target, be it Tim Smith, Lee Briers, Rob Burrow, Sam Tomkins (when he played there) Johnny Lomax etc. Age and experience doesn’t come into it.

Morton was unfairly hounded on I agree, but when he initially broke into the side he did well and was encouraged. His development was handled in the wrong way, but that shouldn’t mean young players should not get an opportunity in a big game. Liam Sutcliffe made his debut (or was very early into his professional career) for Leeds against Wire. They didn’t decide to play Brett Delany there just because a great, very experienced team in Warrington may target him. In fact he had a blinder and McDermott was rewarded for the brave decision to put faith in an inexperienced young player.

Agree with the above. Agar has in hindsight messed around too much this season with players in different positions. Unlike the top teams where players have their positions and roles we have seen 2/3 positional changes just to accommodate different players at 6. Smacks of amatuerism really.

Surely, Kay, Goulding both natural halfs should have been given the 6 role and encouraged. Also resulting in not moving players from their natural positions.

Agar did a great job last year but this year there has been some puzzling decisions this season.

The crux of that issue is that Goulding is not Liam Sutcliffe
If he'd been at our club he'd have been playing in front of Sykes.

Washbrook offering nothing in attack was obviously balanced with him offering a lot in defense. I guess they decided to see if the other players could balance it out...Mathers and Lee Smith for example. It didn't work. But it wasn't imho a terrible decision, it was just a decision that didn't work. Not the same thing.
A terrible decision would have been to put a kid in that wasn't ready.
(I clearly don't know whether Kay or Goulding were ready or not) I'm assuming Agar assessed that himself and made his decision based on that.