Quote: D4mo78 "This poor season could probably be traced back to a badly managed pre-season. It seems we approached the games half d with a lack of gameplan and the focus being on getting minutes in the legs, regardless of which position it was in.
That could be put down to Smith's naivety, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out the importance of pre-season for building combinations, structure and cohesion.
What's clear is that the club is broken on the field, and has been for some time. It feels like we're stuck in the past still living off the success of the golden generation.'"
Good Post.
To be fair to Smith, we have been so dogged by injuries and suspensions that for me anyway FWIW it was a decent shout trying out people in new positions and making people play a new position where in a pinch or a tough game with injuries / sending offs etc they can be rotated into and are not going in "cold" but I do think and agree with you that we spent all preseason on Gimmicks, some which worked, some which unfortunately were doomed to fail.
You can only practice so many in a non competitive environment so kudos for him trying out the short kickoffs etc all preseason but that Warrington game mustve come as a very rude awakening to the realities of a loose preseason and actually competitive RL and some of the gimmicks now look just like plain stupidity.
As for the club being broken I totally agree, weve patched up the cracks for years and its been "jam tomorrow" and false dawn after false dawn for nearly 6/7 years and I think this is the culmination of celebrating our successes instead of putting it in a box and moving on to the next one.