I'm not so sure Jim I think RS is right up there with Brad Arthur...

In other news, water is wet.

I just listened to the RS interview on WYS. Thought it was quite interesting for a few reasons. What is obvious and comes across is that he's a decent bloke, and clearly had the best interests of the club at heart.

One really interesting point he made is that the club wasn't in that bad a position when he came in. As fans, I think we can be quick to over-emphasise the problems within the club from an outside perspective because we don't see the inner workings. If you were to look at the club aside, from the first team performance, (women's team, academy, learning / physical disability teams, MND work etc.) you would say it's in a fantastic place. I saw Danny Houghton recently question why fans thought the club was toxic just because they were losing, and I think we probably have a similar view here.

What's clear is that being a champion team is all about effective use of the salary cap. Wigan are able to spend £300k more than us, because they use it more effectively with dispensation of home grown talent, which has allowed them to supplement this with better overseas players.

I think there were fundamental issues with the RS philosophy. I think he expected every ruck in SL to be super quick, and based his entire game plan around quick ruck speed. When that wasn't the case (which I sympathise with as the ruck is appalling), there was no plan B to fall back on and the players looked completely directionless.

We do need a coach though who is of the same mind, carefully bring through emerging talent, create clear pathways for youth, stop gambling on players who are massively injury prone and only play half a season, and we will see the fruits of that. The question now, is whether BA is the man to do that or not.

Actually, I think some of the things you mention there about structure and pathways is the realm of the SD not the Head Coach. I did wonder if RS would be a better administrator than coach, perhaps.

Smith is probably a decent bloke, but the harsh fact of the matter he is incompetent and has completely devasted the playing side of the club. Look at the amount of poor players in the squad. Most of these players will have to be jettisoned before we can start to rebuild. Compare us with Salford, we took two star players from them, yet by and large they still perform better than us. Problems with the ruck? Any decent coach will recognize and rectify the situation. No doubt the club is well run with women’s team, disabled rugby etc etc, at the end of the day the success of the club boils down to the performance and success of the first team. Check out the league table. Not to mention the fact that we have had to bring in an emergency coach to try and stem the free fall. He will probably leave at the end of the season. At the moment not much seems to be happening regarding recruitment for next season. Apart from the signing of a 37 year old winger. You make a list of what in incoming coach should undertake, I fully agree with that unfortunately all these points Smith spectacular failed on. Hence the complete mess we are in.

Interesting point.

Done, finito

Another season down the drain. Cannot see being any better next year unless we can offload half the side and most of the pack

Best chance we have is replacing Fus and Martin with real high quality NRL forwards, working like hell with our young players over the next 5 months and keeping Arthur in post.

Under those conditions we could do better, and then we should have more cap and possibly quota for 2026. It does look like most of the signings made under RS, whoever has been responsible for the names and the budget, have failed to take us forward.

Blease has a bigger job on maybe than he realised.

Well while Smith's style was a big problem, clearly so is the squad. Its not top 6 quality, which given we're at the cap is quite astonishing. We've invested heavily in the backs but have very little punch there, and our forwards as a group are among the worst in the league.

We'll keep talking about not giving up, plenty of games etc, but this season is done. The focus should now be on working out who we want to keep, and giving some time to younger players to show what they can do.

Smith did one good thing in terms of squad. He showed its possible to shift players who are under contract. Sadly he didn't get rid of some of the players who continue to fail, and signed too many who have become part of the problem. To have a serious go at moving up next year we'll need more than one or two changes, but it looks like its going to take at least two rounds of getting recruitment decisions right before we genuinely compete.

In a way it’s good that we’ve fallen short, there can be no misunderstandings, nothing is unclear, the squad is simply miles off being good enough to compete. We have a few players out of contract this off season (Fusitua, Martin, Donaldson, Johnson, Roberts) and plenty more the year after. I think Blease needs to be telling some of those out of contract at the end of ‘25 that they are free to find another club now as they will not be renewed again. Some will take this up and move on creating more cap space and perhaps even more quota spots.

I’m struggling to think of many players who I would be heartbroken to see leave. With enough cap space and quota spots available, perhaps we can convince BA to stay and fix the project. We need to have either him, or someone with his experience and quality, otherwise we are in for another loop of poor coach and poor squad that will take another 2-3 years for someone else to fix.