Rumbled.

I wonder what Dan’s thoughts are on hypersensitive agency detection.

Money of course makes the world go round but Saints do a good job of refreshing the squad at the right time. From their SL win 5 years ago for example there is only Makinson, Percival, Lomax, Warmsley, Knowles and LMS & Roby left, about half the team including most of the forwards have been refreshed. Players over 30 seem to get 1 yeat deals and have to prove their worth. Hull would have handed the squad long deals and just expect them to be at the same level 5 years later.

And for all the player & coaches that have come and gone at Saints ,The results and attitude are the complete polar opposite to ours . Nothing in that club ever changes .

Saints success is built on their academy, there have ex academy players in all 5 key positions with Welsby, Lomax, Dodd, Roby and Knolwes. Add in Lees, Perival and Makinson, means they can take some risks with their overseas places.

Yes, agree with this.

As you say, money makes the world go round, without it any business will struggle, rather obviously! Having a superior budget to your competitors is a big advantage to maintaining your position at the head of your given sector.

However, it isn't the be and end all, especially in the realm of sport. Money alone will not buy you guaranteed success, unless your budget is so superior to your competitors that they simply cannot operate to the same parameters as you. The money invested in Warrington's current squad has borne little fruit in recent times. Going back to pre-SL, Leeds seemed to suffer similar problems throughout the 1980s, when substantial investment in the playing roster year on year throughout the decade only ever seemed to produce under-performing teams. It took a combination of Gary Hetherington and Tony Smith in the early 2000s to change the attitude of the entire club, thereby instilling a winning mentality which carried them through a period of sustained success.

Your point about Saints refreshing their squad is particularly relevant to our predicament as it is something we have singularly failed to do over many years. Since 1985 we have had three periods were we threatened to put ourselves back on top (1989-91, 2004-06, 2016-17) only to fall back into mid-table mediocrity very quickly. One of the chief factors in these very swift declines was our inability to refresh the squad each year (although financial considerations undoubtedly played their part in 91/92). Saints, along with Wigan, are the masters of slowly reinventing their squads without it having any detrimental effect to their chances of winning silverware year on year as they rebuild, therefore their dominance always seems to be seamless with no breaks until you realise they have a different team from the one they had five years ago, as you point out above.

It's not just in RL this is the case either. Liverpool and Man Utd both largely dominated football for twenty years apiece, partly as a result of their ability to recognise when to move players on and replace them with quality substitutes, a trait Man City currently exhibit, although having a budget of a around £1 billion sure helps. But even then, if money is the be all and end all, why haven't Man Utd, the so called self-styled 'biggest club in the world' being floundering for the past ten years and counting!

So, I reckon it's a combination of the two. Any club needs a healthy budget to succeed, but it has to be backed up with a coherent winning culture in order to lead to real sustained success. Either way, we seem to lacking on both of those fronts right now.

I think Hurrell and Bell are good examples of saints culture, if we'd have signed them, they'd likely have taken shortcuts / the lazy option in training and games and not stood out in our team whereas at saints there's no room to hide and average players become good players because they buy in to the system and raise their standards to not let their team mates down, we don't quite have that culture yet

The last 2pages has been the best I have read on here for a long time.the link mild rover produced for the fainaces of all clubs made intresting reading.we seemed to to come out of 2022 not to badly but how much are the Covid repayments back to the government.I don’t think we arere as skint as some “posters”make out and maybe Pearson is thinking il see how Smith goes as he has had his fingers burned with the resigng of fonoua and the signings of Reynolds’s and Evans all on massive money and gale wouldn’t have been cheap and Gerri g sod all inreturn.Pearson does take the blame as well for ok the deals it what was whispered in is ear by the coaches at the time.

The last 2pages has been the best I have read on here for a long time.the link mild rover produced for the fainaces of all clubs made intresting reading.we seemed to to come out of 2022 not to badly but how much are the Covid repayments back to the government.I don’t think we arere as skint as some “posters”make out and maybe Pearson is thinking il see how Smith goes as he has had his fingers burned with the resigng of fonoua and the signings of Reynolds’s and Evans all on massive money and gale wouldn’t have been cheap and Gerri g sod all inreturn.Pearson does take the blame as well for ok the deals it what was whispered in is ear by the coaches at the time.

what you failed to mention in your football comparision is that the teams mentioned had good managers and that goes for Rugby League also.
A good coach in Rugby League can turn a team round or build a competitive team with average players like Brian Smith did with us.
Luck or bad luck also plays a part .
Peter Gentle would in my opinion have become a very good coach at this club but had a lot of bad luck which was nothing to do with his ability as a coach

Thats why teams need a Gaz Ellis type of player in their squad who leads from the front both in training and on the pitch

Completely agree, we're crying out for some leadership on the field, someone vocal who can set the standards for the squad, you look at all of the best teams they have those characters in their squads the likes of Roby and Lomax at saints, Farrell at Wigan, Tomkins and Pearce at Cats. We don't seem to have anyone who talks on the field, the players stand behind the posts with their hands on their hips silent.

Dont forget the headshake in bemusement as to how they let another try in after training well all week

Yes, but I believe this concept/idea of on field leadership is underpinned by the culture which is embedded within those clubs. The players have that attitude during game time because that is how those clubs go about their business in all aspects of their operations on a day to day week to week basis. A culture which states that they aim to be the best at what they do, at all times, in all aspects of how the club operates.

I would agree that the players you cite above are important in how they implement this attitude, but as other posters have mentioned in this discussion, virtually all the other team members at these top clubs also buy into this attitude, most likely a case of shape up or ship out?

Conversely, it's because that culture does not exist at our club that we see games like Saturday where the towel goes in and it's tools down boys! It is difficult to maintain a commitment to high standards during game-time when the work group doesn't particularly adhere to that concept in the rest of the week.

I think most of us on here are in agreement that the underlying cause of a lot of our problems in recent years comes from this attitude of 'that'll do' which seems to run through the club from top to bottom. All the indications are that the club simply isn't committed (or doesn't know how) to the same high level of striving and achieving that those top clubs have, and until we alter this underpinning mind set we will continue to fall short.

At Rovers it took us a while to realise that Tony Smith is yesterdays man. You'll arrive at the same place eventually.

I dont remember any of you saying that when he got you 80mins from a Grand Final and CC final, things only went sour when he announced he was leaving at the end of the season which never goes well when a coach announces that

Genuine question to you.

How do you know that the relatively successful season you are having isn't down to the fact that Willie Peters has been able to build on some solid foundations which were put down by Tony Smith?

Now it may well be that Peters has come into your club and told everyone 'forget everything you have been doing these past three years, this is the only way forward from here on in', but I have my doubts that is the case here!

The fact that the likes of McGuire and Hodgson worked under both regimes suggests a certain amount of continuity at rovers. Your club was on a fast track to nowhere before Smith took up the post, he clearly improved matters to some degree as evidenced by the fact that he took you to within 80 minutes of both major cup finals (a fact I've noticed you are reticent to acknowledge, presumably because it doesn't fit your current narrative!).

Unless you work at rovers on a day to day basis, you have no real idea of how much of this season is down to either Peters being a completely new broom, or (more likely) the fact that he inherited at least a solid ground, from which he has been able to implement his own ideas without the need to do the groundwork which tends to be required at any club rebuild.

Tony Smith has, unfortunately, inherited another Hull club which requires rebuilding from the ground up. Whether he is successful here remains to be seen, but your dismissal of any work he did whilst in rovers employment is at best disingenuous, or at worst playing blind with facts.

Peters has undoubtedly done well this season, but I repeat, you don't know (or have chosen to ignore) what the situation at your club was like when he first walked through the door, you were hardly a basket case, which was quite possibly the situation when TS took up the offer to coach there.

Like I first said, this is a genuine serious question to you, I'm not baiting or looking to score cheap points over you. As a black & white I am hardly in a strong position at the moment to play those kind of cat and mouse games, am I!!!

Ryan Hall did say in his post match interview after the Salford game that it's the fittest the squad has been in recent years which is interesting given rovers league position and Tony's 'undercooked' approach to the start of our season

Also worth noting that Peters himself during their pre season stated TS had left the playing side of the club on solid foundations.

As you say their fans didn’t have a problem with TS, many weren’t too happy he was leaving and many saying Lakin was an issue, the only issue they seemed to have with TS at the time was has the way he announced he was leaving. It wasn’t until the situation within their club and results suffering they started to question TS. Funny how they changed their views once it was announced he was joining Hull and no longer think he did a good job turning them around

Tony Smith’s legacy at Hull KR is complicated.

The positives first. He won a SL play-off game, only our second ever, the first since 2010 and in our first play-off appearance since 2013. Bigger than that he stopped the score-one-get-one-free offer we seemed to run for nearly a decade, and the mental toughness of the squad seemed much improved.

The negatives. After Peacock, anything that smacked of ‘one step backwards…’ was hard to stomach, so I didn’t enjoy the approach we took in 2020. The whole ‘play some footy’, ‘don’t worry about the wrestle’ stuff had already worn a bit thin under Sheens (who was gloriously pragmatic in 2017, tbf). It felt like Smith was more interested in curing his RL ennui than addressing the fans’ boredom with losing. If he’d gone to Hull and suddenly become laser focused on winning whatever it takes, I’d have been reet peeved. Then there was the strop, which could have been really damaging… and only wasn’t in the long term because he hung around to oversee the wheels fall off in 2022.

Good coach but sometimes the fit just isn’t right.

When Smith was at Rovers they always had a soft belly when it came to defence and a lot of their play was off the cuff.
Whether you like it or not Peters has come in to Rovers and from day one worked on their fitness and defence structures which is evident to see when you watch them.
Their high level of fitness allows them to defend multi times when necessary and have something left in the tank to attack when given the chance.
Compare that with our fitness levels under Smith and you have to be critical.
From your argument i would say that Peters has been a completely new broom rather than he inherited anything solid from the Smith era

Anyone who thinks the Dobbins moderate success is down solely to Peters brief tenure is deluded.

If TS didn’t lay some foundations to build on, its the only club he’s ever coached where that hasn’t happened.

Do we really have to hang on the coat-tails of how well Smith did, or didn't do at Rovers?
Seems that way to some.
Far more interested in what he can do to turn us around, or not, as the case will be.

you could also say Brett Hodgson apart from some disasterous signings left the club with foundations to build on like his work with the academy and reserves
Rovers success on the field is down to Peters nothing to do with Smith

Seems we just about have a split decision Wiz with your post and Irregular Hoops
with you on this one

11th.11th, 6th (part season) 10th at time of sacking. Maybe Peter's 5th possibly 4th would have been achieved anyway but I really don't think so.

Tony Smith signed expensive overseas flops like Takairangi, Vete and Sims. He signed players who were just not Super League standard at all like Trout, Maher and Rawsthorne.

And we could defend no better on the day of his departure than the day of his arrival..

But we went off Smith for more than that.

He would stop speaking to people after a disagreement even the club CEO and his assistant coach who happens to be one of the most respected figures in the history of Super League. He said he worked for the players not the club.

Tony Smith is a complex character with a massive ego.