Well, this thread proves that fans opinions are just as divided on this issue as they are on so many other matters – rugby, politics and life in general I genuinely can’t understand how Denis’s communication skills, team selections and style of coaching still receives support. Compare him to Tim Sheens who is articulate, capable of trying out various team selections and different tactics, and who seems to be able motivate and get the best out of the available pool of players. Of course, DB’s supporters will not agree with my views, but that’s that’s the beauty of having a fans forum.
Tim Sheens is a world class coach and a great appointment, but not everyone has agreed with his team selections, particularly concerning Lyons, and we were beaten out of sight by London and Dewsbury. As far as I am aware, no one is calling for him to be sacked (yet!!). He is one of a few coaches who will readily admit to a poor performance and clearly has the players behind him. He has been a breath of fresh air at the club.
It seems that some fans (most?) were prepared to accept that to finish outside the top 5 in the Championship this year would have been acceptable, but not prepared to give similar leeway to Betts in the SL.
Betts, like a lot of coaches - remember Paul Cullen! - often spoke in clichés (he couldn't help his gravelly voice) and would never seem to admit that his team were awful to watch. People remember his comment (probably borne out of frustration) telling fans if they wanted to watch a winning team, they should go somewhere else (did he actually say that?). I think he did mention that fans who remembered the glory years in the 70's and 80's were expecting the same success, but on a fraction of the budget.
As to his team selections, he was criticised when he played Whitley as a centre, but isn't that where he has played most for Catalan. I think his choices in 2017 were limited to some extent by injuries, particularly in the forwards.
I thought that we saw some decent performances in 2013 - 2016, but agree that 2017 was dire with a complete lack of ideas other than the predictable five drives and a kick (invariably straight to the full back) and seemingly players (and fans) having a losing mentality and no sign of any change. As I have said, I think Betts should have gone at the end of the 2017 season or even have walked away when Rule sold our key player and made no funds available to strengthen the squad in 2016.
I think his sacking in 2018 was an attempt by Rule to deflect the blame from him, with Cummins, who should never have been appointed, left in an impossible position. We will never know whether Betts could have saved us in the play-offs. I doubt it and, as has been said, it would only have meant another year of predictable struggle in SL and an opportunity for Rule and Co to take out more money for themselves and probably build up a bigger debt than they left us with in 2019.
The O'Connor/Rule/Betts era started with high hopes and we seemed to moving in the right direction in getting back into SL and making some (if limited) progress up to 2016. It then fell apart in financial disaster due to financial mismanagement by Rule and Co, who took substantial funds out of the club for themselves, building up a massive debt and not making any investment in the playing squad. One day, I would like someone to publish details of just how much Rule and Co took out of the club during their tenure and how they were able to get away with it. This should never be allowed to happen again at Widnes or any other club.
Hopefully, once the game re-starts we can start to look forward to a better future for the club, whether this is in SL or the Championship and the fans can enjoy watching a winning team playing a decent style of rugby, instead of looking back at the O'Connor/Rule/Betts era (but not forgetting).
The era under Happy Frank was a disgrace. Never seen so many unmotivated and disinterested players in a Widnes shirt ever. Less talented ones maybe but that team with a handful of exceptions just chucked in the towel.
I was not happy with BETTS appointment for SL when he was appointed after the way our last season in the championship panned out. I believed we needed an experienced head coach to guide us and BETTS was not an experienced head coach. We had a chance in the championship to start building a side but we didn’t as the club probably believed that we would be ok for a while as there was no relegation.
The only bright part of the BETTS era was when BROWN was at the club. I think his input on the coaching was the reason we picked up and not just his performances on the pitch. BROWN missed a lot games through injury and our game was so reliant on him that we rarely performed without him, no plan B.
People say BETTS had his hands tied with budgets, but don’t the majority of SL coaches? Giving people like Marsh, Macraff, White and numerous others extended contracts would have been down to him with his feet so far under the table. Most SL clubs outside keep an average player for a couple of seasons before letting them go and replacing them with another hungry journeyman, we kept giving them new contracts.
Despite what some people believe I feel that we needed a scout. I know some believe that the game is so widely televised these day but highlight reels and stats don’t show the big picture. As most of us know there are some decent players in the championship who for whatever reason didn’t make it at super league level but given a second chance go on to do well. RULE dealt with the players and agents, hence the ‘I’m just on the phone to an agent in OZ’ and ‘we are searching the world looking for players’ stories, but he didn’t look as hard as he should for a club that was hardly swimming with cash. The club should also have given more support to the local clubs as this is where a player will begin his journey and be looking up at the club/players, this would have built a up a better rapport with the amateur game which itself is struggling.
RULE was creaming the club for a lot of money, but he was doing it with the backing of SOC who grew tired of being in the public eye, which apart from his business dealings, publicity was the most likely the reason he was involved in the club let’s not forget.
We lost a lot of money through sponsorship due to Jimmy not keeping his promises to sponsors and threating them in a shoddy manner. RULE and friends were receiving large salaries that would have been agreed by SOC. A club the size of ours could never have supported such salaries long term.
All of this plus SOC not wanting to fund the club any longer lead to a lack of quality on the pitch, thus leading to the bad performances that turned the fans off the club, resulting in relegation, and if we had have stayed up it would have been the same the following year.
This is my interpretation of the BETTS era and not fact, the facts of the matter are something we may never know.
Some stats:
Win %s:
Happy Frank: 25.81%
Betty 40.34%
Bernard Long 31.25%
Graeme West 34.00%
Tony Myler 35.14%
Now purely statistically Betts was better than the others....I can't comment on Myler, Long or West (don't remember) but that surprised me a little: maybe it was that when it was bad in 2011-18, it was really really bad....
Some stats: Win %s: Happy Frank: 25.81% Betty 40.34% Bernard Long 31.25% Graeme West 34.00% Tony Myler 35.14% Now purely statistically Betts was better than the others….I can’t comment on Myler, Long or West (don’t remember) but that surprised me a little: maybe it was that when it was bad in 2011-18, it was really really bad….
What it tells us is that the Club has really struggled since the advent of Super League in 1995. We had financial struggles from about 1993 which led to us selling lots of our best players and indirectly led to us being excluded from the first seasons of Super League. We have had financial problems at various times prior to this but this one was the most damaging as during this time the amateur Rugby League in the town declined markedly and we sold our ground.
It's a long way back to where we were from the Mid 70's to the Mid 90's. The Rule Administration was a lost opportunity. Rule probably knew the game was up when we sold Kevin Brown. Dennis Betts maybe knew the game was up as well. If he had resigned at this point he would have left with his reputation intact. Coaches used to resign when boards sold their best players against their wishes as Eric Hughes did when we sold Joe Lydon.
A frustrating issue I had with Betts, is the poor player development and the lack of ideas to change losing runs into winning runs.
Hansbury was a superb and formidable full back on his day, however, he made the same mistakes constantly that could have been coached out of him. Runciman (remember him) highly rated in Australia, was actually decent in the few games of the 15 and 16 season but formed dropped dramatically after that, poor coaching? Other examples, Dudson (improved immensely under Watson), Joe Mellor never fulfilled his potential.
Almost, every season under Betts we would have runs of consecutive loses usually around 8-12. Ultimately, a truly great coach would come up with interesting and innovative ideas to get his team out of a losing rut. However, Betts would seldom change the 13 even if it was a losing team, and would rarely try players out in different positions.
I still stand by my initial analysis that Betts was a good, average coach for us, a good coach but not a great one.
Betts' win ratio of 40% must include the Middle 8 games against the championship sides. No way did we win 4 out of every 10 games in SL
Paulie xx
As I’ve said before, during his time here we had some very good players, and we won games despite DB’s involvement.
Sadly, I can only dream of what we could have acheived with those players ... and a good coach.
Betts said if you want to watch a winning team every week, go and find another team.
We've never been able to afford a place in Super League, but I'm not sure if the supporter base will want to watch mid-table part-timers into 2021 and beyond either.
The differing views on Betts as a coach are interesting, but it is stretching it a bit to suggest seriously that:
a. The limited improvement from 2013 to 2016 was down to the team being coached by Kevin Brown and not to any input from Betts; and
b. Betts coaching techniques were responsible for all the games we lost, but not for any games we won.
We were and presumably always will be, a club with limited funding, unless someone like Koukash comes along and is prepared to throw money at the club. We simply cannot compete for the marquee players that Warrington and others can afford. The last time we went down that route was under Doug Laughton, when the club over-stretched itself financially, which ultimately led to the club facing financial meltdown and having to offload players, as well as probably costing us a place in SL in 1996. Great rugby to watch and still exciting when you watch games on Widnes TV, but unfortunately not sustainable for a club with limited support and no outside backer.
I would give credit to Betts for the steady (if not spectacular) improvement from 2013 - 2016 and I was anticipating further progress in 2017. It was clear during that disastrous season that Betts had gone as far as he could with the team and was not able to engender any real team spirit or winning mentality in the team (or the fans!!).
I don't think his tactics of five drives and an aimless kick were any different to many other clubs - that is how the modern game has gone, but we were particularly predictable in our games and were often out-muscled in games and simply overrun. Even in 2016, opposing teams soon realised that they only had to close down Brown to beat Widnes and we had no one to replace Brown in 2017.
It is interesting that Betts has not, as far as I am aware, commented on what went wrong in 2017 and 2018. Maybe he will publish his views of events one day, particularly the impact of losing our best player and only real play-maker and the club then not investing in the team. Perhaps Flash can invite him to be interviewed in one of his podcasts!
Whether a different coach could have changed things around with the same squad, I don't know - or was it that the team and players were simply not good enough. We also had an extraordinay run of injuries in 2017, with many players struggling with fitness throughout the season.
To me, the Dennis Betts era was one of initial optimism leading to ultimate disappointment and anger at the decline of the club. I would suggest that this was more to do with the management of the club rather than the coach. I consider Betts to have been an average coach, who took the team as far as he could in 2016 and perhaps should have gone at the end of that season. I am not sure whether a new coach would have done any better (or worse) in 2017 and 2018 given the circumstances.
Looking forward, we now have a top class experienced coach, who speaks honestly and openly about performances and expectations, and who clearly has engendered a team spirit that was lacking for some time. Whether the individual players and team are good enough to be able to compete at the top end of the table and possible promotion, only time will tell. We have had a reasonable start with signs of a decent team emerging and I can't wait for the season to re-start, so that we can continue our journey following Widnes Vikings.
That’s a very thoughtful analysis Frank, but we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I appreciate that talking about what “could have/should have been” is a mugs game .. but, as a Widnes supporter for almost 50 years, perhaps I’m well qualified to be a mug!
That’s a very thoughtful analysis Frank, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. I appreciate that talking about what “could have/should have been” is a mugs game .. but, as a Widnes supporter for almost 50 years, perhaps I’m well qualified to be a mug!
Me too - like you been watching Widnes for a long time from a hardworking team of the mid-50's to the Karalius era in the 60's and 70's (as player and coach) and the top teams of the 80's and the steady decline since then. We have probably been lucky to have seen the successes of the 70's and 80's, but sad to see the decline since then. Probably, the worst season for me was when Frank Endacott was in charge and I must have vowed hundreds of times in the last twenty years that I had attended my last game, only to keep coming back for more. Mugs or fans, I am not sure!!
That’s a very thoughtful analysis Frank, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. I appreciate that talking about what “could have/should have been” is a mugs game .. but, as a Widnes supporter for almost 50 years, perhaps I’m well qualified to be a mug!
Mugs or fans, I am not sure!!
We're mugs, Frank, every one of us! And we'll still be mugs after another 10 or 20 years of thwarted hopes!
I still think we dramatically underestimated how decent of a time it was from 2013 to 2016. In many ways we overachieved.
This isn’t a provocative statement but I am always at odds with the mentality of the average Widnes supporter. 2016 case in point, I remember games in July and June were we were 7th in the league and yet the sheer lack of enthusiasm and interest from our supporters was astounding. We were having a good season and yet fans were still been critically negative towards the team.
Similar point to the 80s and 90s, I remember games in which we were top of the league yet we’d play saints at home in front of 14,000 speccys then the next week we’d attract 4,500 against Salford.
I still think we dramatically underestimated how decent of a time it was from 2013 to 2016. In many ways we overachieved. This isn’t a provocative statement but I am always at odds with the mentality of the average Widnes supporter. 2016 case in point, I remember games in July and June were we were 7th in the league and yet the sheer lack of enthusiasm and interest from our supporters was astounding. We were having a good season and yet fans were still been critically negative towards the team. Similar point to the 80s and 90s, I remember games in which we were top of the league yet we’d play saints at home in front of 14,000 speccys then the next week we’d attract 4,500 against Salford.
Get what your saying, I think you are right to say the attendances weren't as good as they could of been, not as good as 02-05, but in that 2016 season let's not forget that we went on a really bad losing streak from Good Friday through until the end of May...and we fell right out of contention meaning the games later on in the season were pretty pointless under the 8s system, although Wigan away Mark II was pretty good!!
Fact is, I felt like we were finally getting somewhere, as I'm sure many others did, but the 16/17 off season destroyed any remaining confidence I had in the regime, others will have felt the same way and not gone the game or bought season tickets...I only got one in 2018 at the last minute to be honest.