Why can you only improve? If you and Rovers are both in the same positions next season that they currently are they will both be in the middle eight for the playoffs. Think what might happen then. Having said that looking at the table and the remaining fixtures I would rather be in our position than yours.

I'm guessing he will wait until we are relegated next season before walking.

Spot on. I thought we were making progress under Gentle but Radders has taken us back to the doom and gloom of the Agar days IMO. One step forward, two steps back.

Not sure on the Gentle progress thing. Agar got us to Wembley in 2008 and we actually scored some points there that year (in fact were around 15 mins from winning the game). Not suggesting Agar was the answer but how much better did Gentle do in terms of league position and finals ?

Under Agar (who had two extra years than Gentle) we finished 11th, 12th, 6th, 8th and he got us to a Challenge Cup final. In the two years we got to the playoffs under Agar we got beat in the first round. Under Gentle we got two 6th place finishes, a Challenge Cup Final appearance (albeit one of the worst performances ever) and we got two play off wins. I'd say we had progressed under Gentle.

We're currently on course to finish 11th or 12th this year and have definitely gone backwards under Radford from what we had under Gentle. In fact I would say that we've gone back further than we was under Agar. At least he had an injury excuse in his first season in charge back in 2008 and as you say was 15 minutes away from winning the Challenge Cup too.

I'm not arguing about Radford the question was related to Agar and Gentle. Under Gentle we did finish slightly higher but were totally embarrassed twice on the big stage in two of the worst defeats in living memory for the club. For those two performances it's arguable whether we would have been better off not getting as far as we did although obviously the Wembley appearance will have helped financially. Under Gentle we were still totally susceptible to suffering poor defeats against teams we were expecting to beat so no real change there. Our recruitment under Gentle was garbage in my opinion despite him having Pearson's money at his disposal. That recruitment failure is a part of the reason why we're so poor this season but certainly not the whole story.

Agar=Gentle give or take a place or two. There was no real progress for two years after Agar was sacked (and certainly hasn't been this season either).

League positions - Gentle's worst was as good as Agar's best. An average of 6th vs 9th (roughly 20% increase in league standing).
Cup finals - Gentle managed as many as Agar in half the time.

The key difference between the 2 is knockout rugby against SL opposition IMO. Gentle won 5 out of 7 games, Agar 3 from 8. Those 3 came in the year he took over midway through, so he went on a remarkable run of 5 without a win over 3 years. Only once in those 5 games were we within less than 16 points.

I personally don't think there's a debate to be had on whether or not we made progress under Gentle, it can only be about whether we made enough.

This is the key point I think. For me, progress was made under Gentle compared to where we were at with Agar in charge. It might not have been enough but I do genuinely believe that some progress was made.

Don't join the non-existent debate then



Only kidding - if there was an improvement it wasn't very big as the fairly common defeats under Gentle against lower level opposition (a common Agar trait) together with the abject thrashings show all too well. My point is that since Gentle left there seems to be an over-inflation of what he achieved as against the reality. It's probably because people want to make Radford look even worse than he already does.

I would say that two sixth place finishes under Gentle suggests that we were more consistent with him in charge than we was with Agar in charge. He also opened the door to our younger players like Lineham, Crooks and Shaul which was something Agar rarely did. I would say that those two areas were signs of progress. Gentle also got us some long sought after wins against Leeds which I don't think Agar achieved once. We also managed to beat SL opposition in the cup for the first time since 2008. I'd call those two things a sign of progress as well. I agree that he didn't improve upon the defeats to lower level opposition and the thrashings were just awful and those areas should have been improved upon. Let's not forget though that we had some pretty dire performances under Agar too. It's not like those were a Gentle trait. Was Wembley and the Hudds playoff really any worse than the Leeds playoff debacle under Agar or getting stuffed 46-0 at home to Wigan the year before that?

That's not me over-inflating Gentle's achievements. That's me looking at some of what Gentle did that I think he did better than (or at least was a match for) Agar.

Good point.





See, I can see the argument that there's possibly an over-inflation of how good we were under Gentle (and it's not necessary. Radford doesn't need to be made to look worse, this season has easily been bad enough), but I think you're going too far the other way in saying we didn't progress under him. IMO we clearly did, and it is borne out by improved league positions and improved results in knockout games. Last year alone we won as many knockout games against SL clubs as we did in Agar's entire tenure.

I do wholeheartedly agree about the number of thrashings being unacceptable. I think the one big criticism of Gentle's reign is that gap between best and worst performance. It was supposed to narrow, but if anything broadened.

I still would have preferred to see Gentle being given the opportunity to clean house, though, unless an established quality coach was on the cards (which it appears it wasn't).

We were definitely better in gentle's first year, hence him being offered a contract extension. It went a bit awry (as awry as a top 6 finish, a wembley appearance and a play off victory get) in his 2nd year but I attribute a lot of that to mcrae's undue influence on recruitment and maybe radford undermining him.

He did appear to start the ball rolling there although in the case of Lineham he was all ready to sign Nick Youngquest instead until Radford persuaded him to give Lineham a go. His recruitment was a nightmare in my opinion which has set us back.

Also, I must stress that this should never be a serious factor in rating Hull coaches, Gentle had a much better record against the dobbins than Agar.

gentle just has a better record than radford doesn't he? What was his win %?

In regular season Super League Gentle's record was P54 W28 D4 L22 55.6%

The question I would ask is, do you think his recruitment was any worse than Agar's recruitment? I don't. I'm not saying it was better, mind. For me, we made progress under Gentle compared to where we was heading under Agar. I'm not saying it was enough progress but it was progress nonetheless.

He had a new owner with brass whose knowledge of players in the game was perhaps at that time a little limited. He and McRae wasted a glorious chance to spend the newly available cash wisely, instead signing a number of second rate players on long term deals, mainly it seems facilitated through their own agent. Not every signing that any Coach makes will work - that's the nature of the beast - but in general the return they got was woeful. I believe strongly that it remains the main reason why neither Gentle or McRae are at Hull now. The penny dropped with AP earlyish last season IMO.

I think the McRae effect will take a while to cleanse. I would even go so far to say that McRae has more responsibility for the current situation than either Gentle or Radders.

Seems a fair point to make.

You could have something there.

You hear bits and bobs about what has supposed to have gone on and it all sounds disappointing.

It's not McRae who tinkers with the squad every week, pulls players apart on radio and send the SL young player of the year out on loan.

At the end of the day whatever team Gentle/McRae recruited it was still good enough for 6th and wembley. Radford has had the opportunity to add to that team and totally ruined it. The man is just a poor poor coach.

I don't think we can keep blaming McRae/Gentle, the only players on the field tonight that they signed are Paea and Watts!!!

the rest are all academy who were already on the books, or old timers like Whiting.

That might be the case. But money committed by McRae to certain players could have been spent elsewhere in the positions required.

Our recruitment under McRea wasn't brilliant, but those players that he commited money to were good enough to get us 6th last year, so what happened?