Peet

[morley pie eater]

Well I did wonder how Briers leaving would effect the side and there are wobbles let's be fair but Peet looks a calm as a cucumber at all times,forgetting the wakey game those 3 games against our local teams frankly could have gone very wrong but what he did was produce a gameplan that the team clearly has bought into.

But wigan are a big club and only grand finals are the measure of a coaches worth it'll be interesting to see how the season.pans out.

(Sorry, Foz, your post seems to have been drowned out by an unintentional distraction.)

I agree with you - Peet is looking good, but we'll know better at the end of the season.

I'm more confident that we can win trophies with this team than with last year's, and Peet's influence must be a big part of that - at the very least he'll be telling Rads what changes he'd like to make to the squad and our 2 centres are, I guess, evidence that he knows what he's doing.

Another reason for confidence is the intensity we maintained for the 3 matches you mention. Easing off v Wakey may be another sign of Peet's influence. There must be a hundred subtle ways that a coach affects the club/team, and the signs are that Matty is getting a lot of them right.

[archiekeith]

Oh and by the way what the"best coach " is ,is not quantative as you point out
But qualitative.

[Exiled Wiganer]

Oh and by the way what the"best coach " is ,is not quantative as you point out
But qualitative.

Someone could come up with a system to measure this, taking into account achievements compared to expected levels. If, say, you argue that a coach’s talent is shown by their ability to perform better than an average coach, you could take into account resources - financial, and inherited players - relative to the competition and work out who over performed.

So, if you assume that how much money is spent on wages is an important factor in what level of success a coach should achieve, you could take the amounts spent on wages across the league at any one time and compare that with the actual results. You could add in whatever else you felt was appropriate, eg access to juniors, inherited success, even injuries, and take it from there.

For what it’s worth, I “feel” that the biggest step change in performance I have seen was when MaGuire came in. But, that might have been because Noble underperformed with the resources available to him, that other clubs had historically poor coaches, and so on…

I don’t have the time or the access to information to work this out, but it is certainly possible to come up with a set of parameters and assumptions and then work out who the best coach is.

[archiekeith]

Oh and by the way what the"best coach " is ,is not quantative as you point out
But qualitative.

Someone could come up with a system to measure this, taking into account achievements compared to expected levels. If, say, you argue that a coach’s talent is shown by their ability to perform better than an average coach, you could take into account resources - financial, and inherited players - relative to the competition and work out who over performed.

So, if you assume that how much money is spent on wages is an important factor in what level of success a coach should achieve, you could take the amounts spent on wages across the league at any one time and compare that with the actual results. You could add in whatever else you felt was appropriate, eg access to juniors, inherited success, even injuries, and take it from there.

For what it’s worth, I “feel” that the biggest step change in performance I have seen was when MaGuire came in. But, that might have been because Noble underperformed with the resources available to him, that other clubs had historically poor coaches, and so on…

I don’t have the time or the access to information to work this out, but it is certainly possible to come up with a set of parameters and assumptions and then work out who the best coach is.

You make very good points. You've changed the generality of my assertion by stipulation from qualitative to qua tatie the generality of which is tied into achievements etc which ties in with most successful coach Successful and best coach are not synonymous but as you say with manipulation it could possible to come up with asset of parameters that convert an ostensibly qualitative aspect to an objective concept.
When or if you do be sure to let me know

[morley pie eater]

Still Graham Lowe for me.

[archiekeith]

Still Graham Lowe for me.

You little tinker. ok MP

[Exiled Wiganer]

You make very good points. You've changed the generality of my assertion by stipulation from qualitative to qua tatie the generality of which is tied into achievements etc which ties in with most successful coach Successful and best coach are not synonymous but as you say with manipulation it could possible to come up with asset of parameters that convert an ostensibly qualitative aspect to an objective concept.
When or if you do be sure to let me know

My point was initially a narrow one - it is possible to be able to assert X was the best coach, if you define what you mean by best, and make it clear what you mean. So, if I say the best coach is the one who won most trophies in a season, and Graham West is that coach (I haven’t checked if that would be the result of applying that test, by the way), then that is clear and fair.

People’s favourite coach is far easier, and anyone can of course say “I think Graham Lowe was the best coach” without having to justify it, as it a subjective test.

If we did want to show who the “best” coach is, “objectively” (though that is impossible as the tests of objectivity are necessarily subjective), then some factors might include:

- win %
- relative sums spent on wages across the comp
- trophies won (with not all trophies being equal) as against available trophies
- “attractiveness” of play: perhaps shown by tries scored
- players developed into internationals
- players developed from youth team to first team

And so on. One of these days, I may have the time and enough info to have a go. There is though a huge risk about spending much time on this exercise, as 1) your favourite is still your favourite, which is fine and 2) you often end up with exactly the same result as your initial instinct would suggest: eg MaGuire was far better than Noble.

[Exiled Wiganer]

(Incidentally, this whole “opinion based on a premise” point is one of the key reasons for differences of opinion: I may, for example, believe that the most effective way to play position X is have the player run with the ball, and someone else may believe that the most effective way is to have the player tackle. From those different starting points, either person can happily assert all day every day that different players are the best options for position X. And both would be right and both would be wrong.)

[PJC]

Re the comment on Graham Lowe. He was an exceptional coach. However he had a blank canvas. The game had seen nothing like his new ideas. He was the first of his kind.

[morley pie eater]

On a lighter but related note, in Lowe's day, the coach's bit in the programme was called "LOWE DOWN" but it was written vertically, as in

LD
OO
WW
EN

My son was about 10 or 11 at the time and asked me how you say " LD-OO-WW-EN"