You could argue that Salford’s decision to dispense of Karl Harrison’s services - Super League’s first coaching casualty of 2007 - was the foolhardy option. After a period of toil, underachievement and stagnation in the late 1990s/early 2000s, it was Steve Simms and Harrison who gutted the reminiscence of previous regimes and brought the club back onto an upward curve, steadily improving the team performance year-on-year.

The peak was a fifth-place finish last year, the club’s highest placing in Rugby League’s top flight for a quarter of a century. With a glittering horizon of promised riches thanks an iconic new stadium, I doubt I was the only one thinking that Harrison was going to be a Salford RLFC immortal, the greatest since the greatest - Lance Todd.

It just goes to show, then, that coaches or managers, whether plying trade in Rugby League, Union or football, are only as good as their last game (or in this case, their previous season). Rooted to the bottom of the league, with a leaky defence, halfway through the season, the spectre of relegation nearing ever closer, spelt the end of the road for Harrison, just as it has for numerous team bosses facing similarly apocalyptic scenarios.

The tell-tale signs were there. Yes, the recent team performances - namely the 50-point drubbings - were an obvious signal. But it’s the rhetoric that comes after them that traces a bigger picture. Ones to look out for include:

“The spirit in the camp is good” — When the spirit within the squad is good, it’s obvious to everyone. The team exudes an air of confidence, players cut up their team-mates' socks, shove dog sh*t under their car door handles and play similar such jibs on each other. There is no need to iterate that the camp is getting along well together. So when players begin doing it, you know something isn’t right, there’s a bad smell, and it’s not due to the door-handle prank.

“We’ve been unlucky with injuries” — Every team struggles with injuries. Sure, losing certain ‘star’ players are much bigger blows than others, but one man (or three) shouldn’t make a team. Certainly specific to modern-day Rugby League, Harlequins’ Mark McLinden wrote recently about how he believes most players will have played 50% of their career matches carrying an injury of some sort. It is, then, more a case of how many of those injured players are physically (and mentally) up for the challenge.

“The coach doesn’t drop the ball, miss tackles…” — Can you hear the faint chimes of the death knell? You should. It’s true, the players are letting the coach down. A lack of confidence is rife, they aren’t responding to the game plan.

“I don’t know what happened. We’ll have to pick ourselves up next week and try again” — It’s emergency board meeting time. If the coaching team don’t know what the problem is, then who does? Collect your cards on the way out.