BP1 wrote: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.

Steve0 wrote: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

bonaire wrote: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

Yippee try yay wrote: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.

Yippee try yay wrote: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.

His Bobness wrote:At Rovers it took us a while to realise that Tony Smith is yesterdays man. You'll get there eventually.

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

BP1 wrote: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!!!