He then got them promoted unbeaten after he changed the playing staff around. Sometimes a coach cannot turn things around if the playing staff are not good enough. Agar is in his 2nd full season with "his" team and has still shown no signs of improving beyond a top 8 side.

In his first full season with 'his' team did he not improve the results when we finished 6th ? Was he expected to win the grand final within 2 years after starting from 11th with the 'old' staff ? Would Maguire win the grand final with this year's Hull squad ?

It's difficult to separate players and coach in terms if performance but I think maggots would have got more out of the team this year than we've had. Maybe not GF winners of course

Haha there's a new one - maguire mis-spelled text prediction = maggots.

Almost as good as millward = milkweed

Hard not to improve on his previous 2 finishes especially with the quality of players brought in.

It's more than just that, the halfbacks should not be the only brains on the field, so it's not just about the halfback pairing, or even mainly. It's too easy to attribute all of the lack of direction and decision-making issues to those positions (and possibly part of why other teams cope without theirs better than we do). Often, we are just plain stupid and don't see the obvious, in ways that at least one player in a 17 should see for us to exploit.

Think of how many occasions we have seen the following over the past few years:

- On a sunny day, we don't put up any high balls.
- An opposition player gets injured, and we don't try pinpointing them in attack.
- An opposition player is having a bad day, but we don't focus on them either.
- The opposition have a player sin-binned, but we don't shift the ball from side to side to stretch them.
- Our favoured left side attacking is not working because the opposition are leaning towards that side in defence, but we don't try to switch to the right more.
- The opposition clog up the ruck area to combat our tactic of running back into it, but we just stick at it fruitlessly.

These have all been fairly common occurrences and things that are very easy to spot to any half-intelligent person with a reasonable interest in rugby. We should not need a settled halfback pairing to be able to point out a failing tactic and suggest that we try something different or an advantageous situation and how to exploit it, somebody on the field should be capable of saying something, and the coach definitely should. Instead, we have tended to stick to our guns in some irrational belief that they will suddenly yield results.

The derby was a prime example of not targeting an injured player in Green . He was stuck out on the right for Rovers and we ed the ball to our right.

So what's your explanation?

No chance maguire would have won the GF with the players at Hull last season but we wouldn't have been bummed at home to the dobbins in the play offs

Well he took the old staff from a 4th place finish to 11th in a season so anything is possible

Either our players are thick, scared of the possible consequences of thinking for themselves and being culpable, insane (IIRC, one of the textbook definitions is to repeatedly perform the same actions and expect different results), or shouted down by one dominating uber-moron.

I suspect it's a combination of more than one of those, along with the factors you mentioned.

I'm sure I recollect another coach was at the helm at the start of that season. Wasn't that the year that Agar got us to Wembley ? 2009 was far worse IMO.

The weekly anti-agar brigade are in full flow

Indeed, agar did coach us to our 2 worst/most disappointing (in relative terms) SL seasons since our promotion

Hull was 11th when Sharp was sacked halfway through 2008. Agar kept us there, kinda different to the usual boost a new coach gives a club.

2009 was far worse. After winning the first five games and being top we lost 17 out of the last 22 rounds and finshed 12th.

To some degree I feel it a little harsh to lambast Agar for our 2008 final position. Injuries were significant that season, we played the vast majority of the season with no recognised half backs and I also think that the sacking of Sharp had a detremental effect on some of the senior squad members.

2009 was the one which should have seen the end of Agar though.

Thought that was the year that Dykes got us to Wembley on one leg. TBH I doubt our season would have been much different if we'd have stuck with Sharpe.

Plenty on here were praising Agar at the time, mind.

Not heard the radio today but mate just said Agar done an interview and when asked what he thought of the pink kit he said he hadn't seen it. Surely he was joking.

I thought it was tongue in cheek but with Agar one never knows. Would help if I heard the interview as well.

wouldnt read to much into it mate,prob taking the p-ss

Should get himself around asda at kingswood then

That's shocking[size=50 pink[/size

Must admit I found the spectacle of Hame in a pink kit bizarre.

Not what he said in his programme notes yesterday.