Star Sport
Royce Simmons focused on job at Saints
2:18pm Wednesday 22nd February 2012
SAINTS boss Royce Simmons is the not the sort of man to be distracted by newspaper speculation about his job.
Three games into the second season of his two-year contract – with all the big games yet to come and the team joint top at the Super League summit– is hardly the time for either party to start contemplating a change at the top.
But one national newspaper threw Huddersfield boss Nathan Brown’s hat into the ring for the so far non-existent vacancy.
But the speculation does not trouble former Kangaroo test veteran Simmons – who probably started the ball rolling himself the previous week when he declared: “If the team did not win any silverware he expects to be on a plane.”
Simmons said he had not even contemplated next season just yet, saying “fixing up the team’s defence and looking at Catalan” were far more pressing concerns The straight-shooting Simmons said: “All I care about is winning the thing at the end of the year,"
“This talk doesn't worry me. All I care about are my players and winning next week's game.
“I just want to do my job – and get the defence sorted from the weekend. I just do my best and I want a Premiership at the end of the year.”
“You've just got stay focused on those sorts of things.
"Last year we got to a Grand Final and, and with a bit of luck could have won it.
“We also got to the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup and there was nothing in that game, and although Wigan won it we could quite easily have won that too.
“I'm happy with the job I'm doing and my staff are doing and I'm happy with the commitment from my players. So I just worry about that.”
Simmons said that he had not discussed a new contract with the chairman Eamonn McManus yet but nor had he discussed next year with his family either.
It would be better for continuity at the club for Simmons to stay another year – particularly having done such a sterling job last season in such trying times when, but for the injuries to Paul Wellens, Michael Shenton and Jonny Lomax, Saints would have been Super League champions despite playing every game away from the borough and enduring a chronic casualty list.
Simmons said: “Whenever the chairman or the board think it's the appropriate time, they will come and see me.
"This is my club and I'm proud as punch to be at the club. If I'm here coaching next year, that's super.
“If I am not, I've got a family and lot of things outside football I've got to weigh up before I decide whether I'm staying or going.
“I've got kids and grandkids at home, I've got a mother at home, my wife's got a mother at home so there are a lot of things to discuss.
“But I haven't even talked about it with my wife.
“In fact, it didn't cross my mind until my daughter rang the other day to ask what I'd be doing next March because she wants to go on holiday.
“I said I don’t know – I am just doing my job.”
Rugby league can be a fickle business, and Simmons pointed to the talk early last season around the Leeds coaching job.
“Four or five weeks into last season they were calling for Brian McDermott’s job but now they are bending down in front of him. That is life.
“I am here to try and win something at the end of the year. I will just carry on – I know the boys are sweet with that too,” he said.