Players.
Apart from any other motivation the players doing it ( or not doing it, giving it everything )for themselves when they step onto the pitch is what I can’t and never will be able to get my head round and it’s noticeable in every game we’ve played the difference is the opposition for long periods want it more than we do.

Coach.
As to knowing what we’re going to do and the shapes / pattern of play again it’s pretty obvious to those in the stand and even more so to Opposition coaching team what they are.

Their game plan is simple, dominate and get on top of our pack, keeping the amount of good ball we have to a minimum get near our line and sooner or later we’ll concede.

Our attack whilst it can be dangerous the lack of field position reduces the threat and ends up getting more and more desperate / clueless when we’re chasing the game.

Throw in the regular daft penalty and brain explosion and away you go.

Since we can’t replace the bulk of the team or the coach we are where we are and hoping they can turn it around with maybe another player or 2 who could make a difference but it’s purely hope based thinking.

Well, it could have been worse. Barrow and Whitehaven should have put us to bed so we could so easily have been way behind on 6 points but there's still hope.

Maybe now is the opportunity to make wholesale changes off the field as well as on it. It won't be long before the November 2023 accounts will be published on Companies House and I'm guessing the previous year's net liabilities of £351k will be even worse. We can't carry on like this. Let the Council sell the white elephant aka the Shay for lucrative building development and give Town and Fax a juicy share to develop their own much smaller stadium also creating other income streams. Preferably on existing sports grounds (eg Ovenden). Otherwise it will be same old same old turning up to an empty Shay season after season with a progressively weaker team with the same old fans whinging about the coach!

That late shot that effectively cost us the game was a complete joke,nothing in it at all.I do bemoan our discipline but its hard when refs like Vella seem to play different rules.TBF we got the rub on many of his eccentric calls.

York were flirting with relegation last season but won 10 out of their last 11 matches to even sneak into the play offs. We live in hope!

The ref certainly made some strange decisions but was as bad for both sides.

We made some basic errors that cost us position.
Finn says they talk about making a better start but its time they did.
Defend like the lads did for most of the second half and we would not be in the position we are.
I was always told that if you defend well the attack has the chance to win you games. We just don`t seem to put the required effort into the first 20 minutes.
It is going to be hard to turn it around now we are in the bottom two.

On a dfferent tack should Ed have been awarded a penalty try for that high shot?


.

Like as already been said Widnes came out of the blocks with far more intent than us and exposed our right edge for all of their scores. We came back by exposing their right edge in the first half but seemed to go away from this in the second half. The Graham break when his pass just couldn't be taken in by Woody didn't help. All in all when you keep giving sides big starts you will lose far more then you win and now we find ourselves in the bottom 2. We are in a real mess and i do not have confidence in the players to get us out of this mess or Finn as coach but we are stuck with them so it is down to them to gets us out of it.

Anybody know what Gilmore / Widnes was penalised for when being dragged into touch?

On Radio Merseyside they said Gilmore dragged a Fax defender off the Widnes player that was being dragged into touch.

It was Gilmore who was in possession and him being dragged into touch and he offloaded to his teammate whilst still being in the field of play.

But as you say the ref when challenged after the incident by Gilmore and at half time when leaving the pitch by the Widnes coaching staff indicated someone had pulled / obstructed a Fax player, didn’t see anything at the time and if it had been earlier in the play when Gilmore first picked up and took off the question is why the penalty wasn’t taken further down the field where it had taken place.
Have to watch it back to see what went on but looked a strange one even by some of today’s standards.

if we go down am guessing all contracts are void which will mean a total rebuild and the only way i can see us getting rid of finn seen as the board aint got the balls to admit they have made a massive mistake

Maybe Theo current Vplayers should watch. Richard Harris in ‘ This Sporting Life’ filmed at Thrum Hall to give them some fighting spirit!

I don't think you can really accuse the players of lacking in fighting spirit, they only lost by 4 points against one of the league's strongest teams.

Folk seem to forget we have now been a championship team for over 20 years, have one of the lowest average crowds, are laden with hundreds of thousands of debt and have problems with being evicted from an oversized stadium we can't afford to take on.

It's not just us, other teams aren't far behind. That's why clubs need to stop sleep walking into oblivion and get their heads together for the good of the sport. Collectively reduce entrance charges to a tenner, reducing player contracts accordingly; offer half price admission at away games for season ticket holders; put on meaningful pre match entertainment; get rid of the so called expansion clubs: Midlands, North Wales, Cornwall, Newcastle, Toulouse and London,; scrap League 1 and expand the Championship with the remaining League 1 grass roots clubs; reintroduce the Yorkshire and Lancashire cups as a pre-season warm up and the equivalent of a Northern Rail competition to operate alongside the Championship; forget about Super League which will probably go bust when SKY renew the contract when they offer even less money because they know no other broadcaster cares about RL

Wholesale changes, etc are needed otherwise as I say we'll just plod along slowly dying in the process.