A great era though and great for the City. For a period of seven years, at least one of the two clubs was either winning or competing for trophies each season.



Unfortunately, I think this success, especially in Hull's case has inflated our expectations ever since.



No one had a devine right to be the best team (you hear it all the time in football - there must be c50+ clubs trying to get 'back where they belong', when the Premier League only has room for 20 clubs). However, with our infrastructure, full salary cap and fan base, we should be achieving better than we do.

Not sure on Fitzgibbon, like our current coach he workhorse as a player (though obviously of a completely different standard!) and being workmanlike isn't what we are bad at. We need flair and attacking skills.

Good win today, but still have to comment that Tony Smith has now lost 4 in a row at Wire, which for a club with their ambitions won't go down well...could he be tempted down our end of the M62?

If Smith can't get Wire winning with a superior squad, what makes you think he'd do anything for us?

Radford sounded very emotional there.

he's having a poor spell at the moment, but his record is 2 SL wins, 3 Grand Final defeats, 3 Challenge Cups the best record of any of the coaches we even have a dream of attracting.

I wonder exactly what Tony Smith's coaching input is these days. Is he moving upstairs and far less hands on these days and is this by personal choice? Perhaps he doesn't want the day to day grind any more but having said that he is still worth making inquiries about. A reduced Smith input and the increasingly influential contribution of his new assistant certainly provides a plausible explanation for Warrington's recent downhill slide.

I'd say Brian Noble has a better record.

3 SL wins. 2 GF defeats. 3 WCC wins. 1 CC win.



But I'd still rather have Smith!

But Smith inherited a team that had won nowt with a reputation for underachieving and turned them into winners. Noble inherited a fully formed champion side and slowly engineered its decline.

A very biased assessment there.

I don't think anyone ever said he didn't care or didn't want to succeed.



Clearly he has been feeling the pressure as anyone would.



Interesting that he said he would have walked if we had suffered a heavy defeat today - did he say by 20 or 30 or by 30 or 40?

I have remained convinced that he would/will walk and not wait to be sacked. That's why Pearson can afford to back him so much because he knows he wont have to sack him. Not sure he said he would have walked today though - thought he said that if we were getting comprehensively hammered every week by 30/40 points then he would go, which clearly we're not. Was glad he had a minor pop at his critics though. If they can't take it etc....