McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:09 pm  

NZ well beaten and completely outmanoeuvred, outhought and outfought.

Well done the Bradford old boys, including George Burgess, John Bateman, Elliott Whitehead and man-of-the-match Brett Ferres.

We may have lost them, but for me, it was a bit like a home game!

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:34 pm  

Quite the opposite for me; it made me feel quite bitter about how we've been screwed out of quality players by a series of incompetent directors.

Like looking up your ex on Facebook to find she has lost weight, got a nicer hairdo and is doing well for herself.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 01, 2015 8:44 pm  

To be fair, I quite enjoyed watching Bateman being out of his depth.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Mon Nov 02, 2015 5:43 am  

Ferres was superb. He'd have been a great player for us had he not been pushed out of the door against his wishes in a player plus cash deal for David Solomona.

Wonder whose idea that was.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sat Nov 14, 2015 7:46 pm  

McNamara - first man for many years to coach us to a Test series win. Well done Mac. He will still have his knockers, but how bitter a pill for them, as they have to swallow it, like it or not

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sat Nov 14, 2015 9:00 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

McNamara - first man for many years to coach us to a Test series win. Well done Mac. He will still have his knockers, but how bitter a pill for them, as they have to swallow it, like it or not

Well said. Credit said where credit's due. Thought it was a good performance with the the players available.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 15, 2015 3:43 am  

Wonder where all our usual experts are who insist McNamara "can't coach"?

There are a couple on VT who are left with nothing but "it was a very poor NZ team that anybody would have beat" and similar delusions - if you look back these same people before the series were predicting annihilation because despite a couple of absences NZ were soooooo much better stronger and well coached.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 15, 2015 8:54 am  

Macca will be a different coach now to the one we had. He took over when we were in a real mess letting players go. He is learning his trade in the NRL which will do him a lot of good. I thought he was poor with us - the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time when we had him but I give him credit where it is due. He has improved and I now do think he will one day come back north and get a job in SL.

Can we all email the BBC and ask them in future to put a microphone on Jimmy as that would be good entertainment. Admittedly, it would need to be shown after 9pm.
I wonder if Jimmy noticed the difference a proper scrum half makes to a team. Just maybe he did.

[Bulliac]

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 15, 2015 10:48 am  

It's difficult for everybody when there are problems in the back office. Over quite a few fairly recent seasons, coaches have taken flak for for alleged shortcomings when many of the things they took the rap for were often largely out of their control, Mc 'banana' definitely included.

Fortunately the old, 'we are the Bulls' and 'we should be top of SL', attitude has largely disappeared and there seems to be a much more realistic way of thinking about things around these days. Though I admit, it took long enough.

Re: McNamara and Lowes - the coaching dream team : Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:09 pm  

woolly07 wrote:

I wonder if Jimmy noticed the difference a proper scrum half makes to a team. Just maybe he did.

If anyone wanted a mugs guide to what is meant by "leading a team around a park" then the video of that game would be as good a primer as any. Smith's distribution and in particular his second half pinpoint kicking put us on the front foot, took tons of steam out of the opposition, and must have had a demoralising effect. imagine if Siejka had been able to do that