Un-like you who's little face lights up with glee when the slightest negative comment is placed on McNamara! wether its true or not doesn't really matter, just another string to your bow!

Fine, take the word of 'chris_leeds', the impartial reporter.

Even if it isn't all coaches have these kinds of spats with players.

It wasn't so long ago that Southstander was rife with rumours of players falling out in lumps with Tony Smith and how he ought to be sacked.

While I have reservations about McNamara I'm not bothered by poop fourth hand rumours on Southstander.

It is amusing that there are people out there who actually believe you can have any place of employment of dozens of random blokes, where they all think the boss is just great, all of the time, and spend all day mutually back-slapping and exchanging compliments.

Or maybe they know the world's not actually like that, but still somehow believe rugby league clubs bizarrely are.

Wahey!

IThe dancing banana is nice and phallic - like it

. . . . I'd take it to the Doc's . . . .

Anyway, after BP has distracted me I will get us back on topic. As much as I am an optimist for 2009 Macca has to improve some of the results - too many unacceptable defeats last year:

Wakefield 26 Bulls 24
Bulls 16 Saints 22 (at home against a team missing most of first choices forwards)
Leeds 44 Bulls 2 - i'm not mentioning the other 3 losses to L**ds
HKR 20 Bulls 18
Bulls 16 Catalans 24
Sainst 56 Bulls 20 the ref gave them too much in that game but the scoreline is an embarrassment
Hudds 25 Bulls 24 - now they think we are their derby rivals
Wolves 32 Bulls 28
Quins 36 Bulls 24
Wigan 30 Bulls 14 in a play off - worse than 2007!
CC exit at home to Dull left a very bitter taste as well

No doubt af will be on here lamenting the closeness of some of the losses but we also won a few tight ones so you can't have it both ways :

Catalans 18 Bulls 20
Bulls 32 Quins 24
Cas 16 Bulls 18

In all seriousness it says a lot about how bad we were last year when Cas nearly beat is and Quins and Catalans nearly did the double on us

Let's leave aside the close games lost (7-3 split against us though ), and look at the 'unacceptable' losses - 12 if you include the MM defeat, which I would and I guess you would too.

Now that's look at the best performance of recent history - 2003.



The best side we ever had only lost six games, but I think by your standards, all but Wigan away would count as 'unacceptable'.

From this I would draw two conclusions:

1. Eliminating 'unacceptable' defeats is nigh-on impossible.
2. The acceptable number of unacceptable defeats is probably somewhere halfway between the '08 and '03 figures - so that would be eight or nine.

I'm not sure what the actual question is here; I can't believe that a narrow defeat can be automatically deemed "unacceptable". Surely it all depends on the circumstances? Such as, you could play really well and lose by a point, or play like turds but fluke a scraped win. So to me, I could only talk about an unacceptable "performance". I don't see how looking at scores in isolation really helps, except perhaps obvious thrashings, but even then, the away thrashing by Saints referred to, when we were down to 3 fit men and were against a penalty count of 275 in a row, was in fact a very encouraging and creditable performance in very many ways, to me. Indeed at three-quarter time we were damn close to winning that game.

And af hits another nail on the head - are losses only judged as "unacceptable" in retrospect? If we still win the league, are they upgraded to "normal" losses?


I repeat, it is the performance in any given game that I think needs to be assessed for "acceptability". I hate losing, but performance is a much better indicator than the score.