Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 12:46 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

Mike himself has said on tv and radio that he doesnt want to be directly involved in coaching, his skills lie elsewhere.

Sounds like the PERFECT candidate to hand the first team coaching reigns to for an entire season whilst the club is struggling.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 12:55 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

Sounds like the PERFECT candidate to hand the first team coaching reigns to for an entire season whilst the club is struggling.

To be fair, he has a lot of coaching experience. He was assistant to Daniel Anderson for a spell during a very successful time for the club, so he knows what he is doing.

The team have performed better under him than they were under Simmons. We've only lost 3 games, but unfortunately all of those have come against Wigan. Had we not had the Magic game against Wigan and we'd not drawn them in the cup, we'd probably all be talking about finals and how good we are. The fact we've played Wigan so often has just painfully exposed the wounds that were already there.

As I said on another thread, this season was always going to be a struggle. Losing Graham and Pryce and not even attempting to replace them with players in those positions was always going to spell relative disaster. If we can get to the end of the season in 5-7th position and exit the play offs quietly without a major embarassment then I'd consider that a successful stint for this squad.

The club would perhaps have been better served trying to get Brown from the Giants now, perhaps they did. The other alternative was appointing an out of work coach as interim, someone like Justin Morgan, Shaun McCrae or Brian Noble. The problem there is that their vision of how to play the game would differ to Brown's so we'd have two periods of sigificant change in a row and it would be very difficult to win games.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 1:31 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

Mike Rush was and is, the high performance manager, which I presume is an administration role more about ensuring the right structures are in place to develop players, rather than directly coaching them.....Mike himself has said on tv and radio that he doesnt want to be directly involved in coaching, his skills lie elsewhere

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 1:38 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

Mike himself has said on tv and radio that he doesnt want to be directly involved in coaching, his skills lie elsewhere.
I think therefore it is great credit to Mike that he has taken on the burden of coaching the senior team in a period of crisis for the club. In essence he has shown a willingness to take a bullet for the club.

So is Rush's appointment just a cover up to let the non-qualified KC be the actual coach of the team?

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 1:47 pm  

Saddened! wrote:

To be fair, he has a lot of coaching experience. He was assistant to Daniel Anderson for a spell during a very successful time for the club, so he knows what he is doing.

Given the current state of our defence it seems he didn't pay attention to what was Anderson's greatest strength.

The team have performed better under him than they were under Simmons. We've only lost 3 games, but unfortunately all of those have come against Wigan. Had we not had the Magic game against Wigan and we'd not drawn them in the cup, we'd probably all be talking about finals and how good we are. The fact we've played Wigan so often has just painfully exposed the wounds that were already there.

We've played better than anything we achieved under Simmons this season. But we are a long way short of the kind of play that got us to the GF last year. In retrospect Simmons was not the right choice - but we had far more attacking ideas with Gaskell the season prior. To be honest, I don't think I've seen a Saints side this bereft of attacking direction since the darkest days of Murphy.

As I said on another thread, this season was always going to be a struggle. Losing Graham and Pryce and not even attempting to replace them with players in those positions was always going to spell relative disaster. If we can get to the end of the season in 5-7th position and exit the play offs quietly without a major embarassment then I'd consider that a successful stint for this squad.

Graham was irreplaceable. Yet even so - with Laffranchi and Flanagan our pack has performed pretty well. As for replacing Pryce, there was never any chance we could sign a player who could deliver similar levels of performance to that which Pryce achieved when fully fit. Hohaia has struggled since he arrived - but our problems cannot be laid squarely on his shoulders. The truth is our biggest blunder was allowing the Eastmond saga to drag on six months too long. Had we fixed a deadline on his signing sometime around the mid-point of the season before Simmons we would have had time to find a scrum-half. With a recognised scrum half on the books there would be no issue. Gaskell or Hohaia would have a stable partner and we'd have a very flexible kicking game and the benefits of a Jonny Lomax not crushed flat by too much responsibility.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 1:57 pm  

I do wonder how we can have so much youth in the backline but no pace. I just don't understand it.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 1:58 pm  

Suzy Banyon wrote:

So is Rush's appointment just a cover up to let the non-qualified KC be the actual coach of the team?

I will be honest this is what I thought day 1....

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 2:06 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

To be honest, I don't think I've seen a Saints side this bereft of attacking direction since the darkest days of Murphy.

Amen to that.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 4:03 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

To be honest, I don't think I've seen a Saints side this bereft of attacking direction since the darkest days of Murphy.

The funny thing (or not) is,under Murphy even when Saints ran out of ideas we could still go 90 metres for a try in the blink of an eye because we always had relatively fast three quarters.Can't remember the last time we've gone full length for a try in the last 5 years.
The game has changed a helluva lot since then with better defences etc but I think Robys 80 metre interception the other week is the longest in recent times and that just about sums it up our lack of pace to go with few attacking ideas.

Re: Given the lack of imagination, flair, pace etc... : Mon May 28, 2012 4:14 pm  

I know young Wigan players playing in the Wigan first team now who rate Rush highly after dealing with him in various England performance camps etc at junior level so if outside players think that he cant be all bad. Also hasnt he won every game, bar the games against Wigan, since he took over? If the players simply arent good enough then there isnt a great deal that Rush can do.