[Sadfish]

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 1:44 pm  

Wilbred T Pricklepop wrote:

This is ridiculous.

Saints have made 5 grand finals on the trot.

The much maligned youngsters and coach you have now got you to the grand final last year.

Yet one losing run and suddenly theres been terrible problems for years at the club. Massive knee jark reaction.

If you beat leeds next week suddenly everythying will be the dogs bollox again.

This ^^^

But I really don't think Royce can take us any further and would like to see it sorted sooner rather than later, in saying that, we are only 5 points off second spot.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:04 pm  

FearTheVee wrote:

McManus - very shrewd, lots of trophies, built us a new stadium.

That's a mistake in reasoning. The skills required to build a stadium and build a successful team are not a carbon copy of each other. And trophies have been somewhat thin on the ground recently.

Simmons - a career assistant coach with a history of failure as a head coach who has taken us on our worst streak since the 80s and playing some of the most dour rugby I've ever seen from a Saints side. I'm out of my seat when I see us offload these days, as I know I might not see another for a month.

Hmmmm, tough choice.

Actually, it IS a tough choice. No matter how much you try to minimise Royce's abilities they are the very same that got us to a Grand Final.

What you fail to explain is if McManus is so shrewd and Royce was so obviously flawed - WHY did McManus hire him?

If we are going to level the finger of blame I'd say it falls equally upon the heads of McManus, Potter, Simmons and probably Anderson.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:09 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

What you fail to explain is if McManus is so shrewd and Royce was so obviously flawed - WHY did McManus hire him?

I'm not saying Royce WAS obviously flawed, I'm saying that it is becoming increasingly clear that he is NOW. McManus hired the Oz assistant coach, unfortunately for McManus the Oz assistant coach now appears to be a bit of a mug.

Reardless of issues with roster (and I'm certainly not saying the roster is perfect), we look very badly coached and Royce has no idea what his best team is.

There are a multitude of signs that Royce is not the man for the job, whereas I would say EM has proved to be a pretty good leader over his tenure and has a lot of results on and off the pitch over a period of time to back that up.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:18 pm  

McManus is in overall charge no doubt, but there is a huge difference between being shareholder and the store manager.

I was a shareholder of Barclays for a time, but would not have a clue how to run a world wide banking organisation.

Mamanus will have more of a clue, but in the end it's the coaches job to say he wants player abc and McManus' job to say well we can afford A and B or A and C but not all three. If the money man was picking the players that would be a worry as thats down to people who are coaches and can see where the team needs to be progressed. Same for hiring youth, the club may want youth but if the coach does not feel they make the grade then he should not hire them, but of course and this is the crux. The RFL demands 8 of the squad to be club youth.

Wellens / Foster / Makinson / Gaskell / Lomax / Roby / Clough / Dixon.


Which of these due you feel should be dropped for other club developed players, because the concentration on youth is not an option, we can't hire 20 NRL players and neither should we.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:22 pm  

FearTheVee wrote:

I'm not saying Royce WAS obviously flawed,

You said "...a career assistant coach with a history of failure as a head coach". Now unless you count the last five or six games as proof positive of failure (which is nonsensical as even good coaches can have bad runs and we could very easily have won at least three of those games) you are claiming he was a failure BEFORE he arrived and therefore unqualified for a job at Saints.

So, I'll ask again: If McManus is so shrewd - WHY did he hire him?

I really don't understand why McManus is so often give a free pass when it comes to results on the field. I have always given enormous credit to him for securing the stadium. But that's an entirely separate issue. The stadium does not carry a ball. The stadium does not kick goals. The stadium does not score tries.

Going back to the completely baseless decision to give Meli his first extension (at the very least) I think there is ample evidence that suggests he is not a very good judge of players. Couple this with his repeated claim that we are spending up to the cap. If we were - and I have no reason to doubt him without other evidence - we have been getting royally ripped off (especially as half our squad was made up of kids!). Who is to blame for that?

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:39 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

You said "...a career assistant coach with a history of failure as a head coach". Now unless you count the last five or six games as proof positive of failure (which is nonsensical as even good coaches can have bad runs and we could very easily have won at least three of those games) you are claiming he was a failure BEFORE he arrived and therefore unqualified for a job at Saints.

So, I'll ask again: If McManus is so shrewd - WHY did he hire him?

What do you want me to say? That EM made a mistake hiring him? I would think that a cursory look at any of my posts about Simmons would confirm that I think that to be the case.

Mugwump wrote:

I really don't understand why McManus is so often give a free pass when it comes to results on the field. I have always given enormous credit to him for securing the stadium. But that's an entirely separate issue. The stadium does not carry a ball. The stadium does not kick goals. The stadium does not score tries.

Perhaps a dozen or so trophies since he took over might have something to do with it?

The players he signed running up to our most successful ever season in 2006 did carry a ball, did kick goals, did score tries. Vinnie Anderson, Jamie Lyon, Jason Cayless, Leon Pryce, Jon Wilkin, Willie Talau, Lee Gilmour, Jason Hooper, Maurie etc. You talk as if he just had to ride into town and watch the trophies pile up, the actual truth is we remained at the top despite losing players like Iro, Hoppe, Joynt, Martyn, Newlove, Sullivan etc. Yes he had a core of very, very good players, but 3 or 4 top players alone don't win trophies - look at some of the big spending Wigan sides of SL era to see that.

He took over in 2001 and 11 years later we've made the last 6 GFs. Mistakes may have been made in the last couple of years, but whatever mistakes have been made are being massively blown out of proportion by the comical coaching of the current squad.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:57 pm  

FearTheVee wrote:

What do you want me to say? That EM made a mistake hiring him? I would think that a cursory look at any of my posts about Simmons would confirm that I think that to be the case.

Perhaps a dozen or so trophies since he took over might have something to do with it?

Success last week doesn't not mean success next. Yes, we won plenty of trophies. But ALMOST ALL were directly attributable to Martyn, Sculthorpe, Cunningham, Long, Newlove, Iro and a couple of others. Now, how many of those players did McManus sign?

A dozen trophies is meaningless if you don't show the trend. And the trend has been downwards for a number of years.

The players he signed running up to our most successful ever season in 2006 did carry a ball, did kick goals, did score tries.

Vinnie Anderson,

- A flop.

Jamie Lyon

- Good signing.

Jason Cayless

- A waste of money.

Leon Pryce

- Never truly lived up to his potential, but did play well earlier in his career.

Jon Wilkin

- Did McManus sign Wilkin? In any case he certainly doesn't warrant the contract he was given recently.

Willie Talau, Lee Gilmour

- Good players. Both were let go before we had replacements, BTW.

Jason Hooper, Maurie etc.

- Hooper was ok. Played well for a season but was injured too often to be effective. Maurie was a good value buy - but he was never anything more than a 3rd/4th prop at Saints.

You talk as if he just had to ride into town and watch the trophies pile up, the actual truth is he kept us at the top despite losing players like Iro, Hoppe, Joynt, Martyn, Newlove, Sullivan etc. Yes he had a core of very, very good players, but 3 or 4 top players don't win trophies - look at some of the big spending Wigan sides of SL era to see that.

3 or 4 top players don't win trophies on their own. But put Newlove, Martyn, Long, Cunningham and Scully in any mid-table side and I guarantee you success. Let us not be so pompous as to think we didn't buy success. We did. Yes, there was a lot of good coaching at work, also. But without transfer-busting deals to the likes of Newlove, Sculthorpe et al. we would have struggled like anyone else.

He took over in 2001 and 11 years later we've made the last 6 GFs. Mistakes may have been made in the last couple of years, but whatever mistakes have been made are being massively blown out of proportion by the comical coaching of the current squad.

This is just ridiculous. Simmons got us to a Grand Final last season with a depleted, inexperienced side. So the only thing you can base your argument on is a run of six games. Yet, by some feat of magic, you manage to claim the mistakes made in those handful of games OUTWEIGH the mistakes made by McManus over the last FIVE OR SIX YEARS!? I really can't take you seriously.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:59 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

I really can't take you seriously.

Fair enough, we all have opinions. FWIW, given some of your player appraisals above, the feelings mutual.

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:19 pm  

I think McManus has done a terrific job at saints with building the stadium and cutting the bank debt but his last two choices of coach have been terrible. I thought potter was bad until we got this current idiot.

On the recruitment side, we went to long not bringing players in (think we went two years without a single signing) when we was losing the likes of newlove, talau, gidley, long, Cunningham, scully etc.

I think we was unlucky last year with the three signings of shenton, LMS and perry as they seemed very good signings at the time but perry got injured, shenton has been average and LMS has been crap.

Its this years recruitment that will be tough to recover from. We've took to overseas spots up with players that have been asked to play out of postion and it's not worked. I know Royce wanted these three players and is good mates with two of them.

This years recruitment is crazy and entirly down to Royce Simmons and I'm shocked Macmanus allowed him to sign laffranchci and lance to play out of postion.

We are desperate to halfback and props but no quota spots available so god knows how we will get out this mess!

Re: McManus out! : Sun Mar 18, 2012 3:37 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

This might be relevant if it weren't for two facts - 1) Warrington had no silverware to speak of (what's more, they had no nearly success to speak of) when they began their policy of recruiting better players. and 2) they can't spend over the cap, which McManus has repeatedly stated we are spending up to.

You referred to recently though, and recently Wire have won two Challenge Cups and a League Leaders Shield whereas we have won zip.

Also, our Chief Exec before he moved on stated quite clearly in the press that we had not spent up to the salary cap this season.

And in addition, there is leeway now for clubs with international players who were brought in from their academy system to spend more than the regulation salary cap so there is some flexibility for Wigan, Wire and Leeds. It applies to us too but only for James Roby this season.