I have no idea what JJB has to do with this thread, but thanks for your contribution .

It's all very well stating the obvious, but what difference does it make?

The point Arv is that everyone is congratulating the side on a fine performance (which is fair enough of course) but we still lost and it shouldn't gloss over the fact that we've had some pretty poor performances against some pretty ordinary opposition. Had we been more professional over the season and consolidated when we had built up decent leads we wouldn't have been faced with having to beat Saints away or relying on someone else's help in beating Crusaders.
You don't achieve a decent league position by pulling off some miracle win away to the grand finalists who average 40+ points against you, you do it by winning the games you should win, like those against Quins and Crusaders.
The statement might be obvious, but it doesn't ever seem to sink in at Cas- In the 30-odd years I've been following them they've always made lives hard for themselves but in the last few years things seem to be worse.

The only downer on Saturday for me was that it meant you guys were out of the play-offs. I've not got a problem with Crusaders but it would have been much better in my eyes if you were in the 8.

Great following too!

I'm not saying that everything's rosy because it isn't. However, it just seems that whenever we put in a decent performance, we also get "but they should have" posts like yours was. And yet, when good players like Shenton leave for bigger clubs, we then get the congratulatory "He's been good for us over the past few years, needs to do this to further his career, good luck to him" posts.

What is a club like ours supposed to do? Win everything when the cream of our talent gets syphoned off all the time, because that's why we've always been so inconsistent. When we get winning teams, a lot of the talent gets offers from "bigger" clubs where they go to further their careers. So you get fans accepting that we've got to lose the best of our home-grown talent, and still moaning about how we're inconsistent and we never seem to win anything.

Can I just say that in 2004, we lost the majority of our team (including the good players) when we got relegated. We then lost a lot of our good players from the 2006 relegated team. We've now reached a level where we've managed to compete for the playoffs 2 seasons in a row. It's not the grand final and it's not a cup final, but it's the most consistently good we've been over a season for years.

I don't want to see the team like this all the time, but I'd like to see some consistency and continual building. however, simply carping on about what we should have done weeks ago doesn't provide anything constructive. If you're at work and the boss keeps reminding you of all the mistakes you've made in the last 6 months each time you achieve something above expectations, does it help you improve, or does it make you think that whatever you do, it'll never be good enough?

Soz, mate but I don't see what good it does dwelling in the past.

Great post that mate, agree with every word

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And Lo Hek he say that man who keep going on about past he cannot change deserves to be....

Unfortunately I couldn't be there on Saturday as I was away down South for the weekend. I watched the game yesterday and thought it was a great game and massive effort from our lads - they genuinely played with pride and fought for their season to continue.

I think we've paid for a poor first half of the season though and hope the improvement in the second half of the season is something we can take forward to 2011. In reality though, when you consider Hull and Warrington have both lived up to expectations this season and qualified for the playoffs, you could argue that our finish is similar to that of last year, with Crusaders replacing Wakefield above us. Incidentally that's the first time we've finished above Wakefield since 2003 so we can claim back some local bragging rights there.

Absoutley spot on! And I wish you all the best for next season!

Every cloud has a silver lining and all that jazz...Disappointed not to be in the playoffs but the lads played their socks off and going into the game thats all I really asked for. Have to admit though, when Widders crossed the second time I genuinely thought we had 'em...

So did I but once Saints got possession from the kick off it was always going to be a lottery. We had to win so stacked our defense to force an error and this made us vulnerable out wide especially to expansive opposition with equal/more need for the two points. Mid season I bet the game would have been a draw.

Quote fixed - Bonzo

It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case...absolutely devastated when they recovered the kick off because I knew as soon as it happened what was about to go down...you couldn't have written it better than that (unless of course Dean Widders made another full length interception for the winning try)

Quote fixed - Bonzo