To me I think this is something that is an issue with all English sport. Not sure why but the ability of an English athlete to be able to think for themselves and have creativity and flair is non existent. There just seems something about the English mentality at the moment that only allows it to achieve in a very regimented and structured way. Take the most successful English sports for example, cycling and rowing, they are very structured sports and seem to be run by one head figure that controls everything in the athletes lives. Even the England cricket team are successful at the moment but are getting plenty of criticism about how boring and lacking in inventive play they are. Don't get me wrong, I would rather win the ashes by any means than lose to Australia. The problem is in RL we cant even play to a rigid structure well enough to compete with Australia.

Possibly catch 22 with our game. We have taken on the rigid structures of the NRL game which they are so successful with but don't have the flair and intelligence across the park to know how and when to make a variation either on a game by game basis or during a game. The rigidity here seems to have stifled the flair players coming through and many other players can now only play by rote. Back in the day we probably played to our strengths more where if you had a big pack or fast backs that would dictate the game plan now we constantly try to mold the players we have to fit the game plan the coach wants. Maybe it works in Oz cos they've got a bigger pool to draw from?

Completely agree, when we had players like Shaun Edwards playing you always felt GB were in a game against Australia as they could create from nothing. Think it is probably a reflection of modern sport, sport science has developed to the point were coaching by numbers makes it very hard to quantify of the cuff creative brilliance. You can measure tackles made, missed tackles and average meters, but how do you measure the contribution of players like Chase when he was playing like a one man team for Cas.

No you aren't. You've decided he was crap and are going to ridiculous lengths to justify that opinion (better under Agar FFS

) so you're clearly not interested in anything resembling facts or a reasoned discussion.

I refer you to Pearsons judgement call on Gentle.



If he was any good, he'd be at training today. Possibly, he might have decided not to recall the poor players until January to get over the trauma of a longer than average season. He didn't strike me as a taskmaster.



Most peoples opinions of him was "He was a nice guy". I couldnt give a toss if he ripped the heads off Barbie dolls and peed in the hole as long as he won games against London, Salford and Widnes.



Being a nice guy means knack-all in sport, unless you want to sell crisps after your career.

Well done on managing to reaffirm Kosh's opinion of you in such a short time and so succinctly

Let's just take a look at that, shall we?







I'd draw your attention to the key word in there - progress.



Gentle was released because he hadn't made [ienough[/i progress, not because he was worse than Agar. Consistency was his downfall.

That and being undermined internally, perhaps?

I bet Pearson didn't mean that though

Utter garbage. If PROGRESS was the reason, he'd have gone before Wembley as rumoured. It was only the Daily Star that kept him in the role up to then. That's clear.



His game plans were awful.

Still not got over the Miners Strike, Grandad?

If that's the best you can manage, I'd give up now