Quote: leeds owl "I don’t know if it’s a lack of fitness or whether we just don’t have the right physical specimens to compete with the likes of St Helens. If it’s the former, comments like “trainings over rated for some of these guys” from R.S may give an explanation as to why other teams are fitter. If it’s the latter, that’s worrying because we’re stuck with players who can’t physically compete with the big boys for the rest of the season. Our kick chase is laboured, (not helped by Frawley’s terrible kicks), our line speed in defence is poor, and we never hit the ball at pace in attack, all worrying symptoms of poor physicality. Add to that the engines of our so called “impact” players Lisone and Sangare being pretty poor, it’s no wonder we simply can’t match the intensity of Saints. We should be okay against some of the plodders in Superleague, but when we need to match the big boys physically I’m not sure we can do it.'"
I dont think our kick chase was anything different to Saints kick chase, the difference was the kicking game, we were kicking it straight down Weslbys throat, meaning he was on the 40/50m line by the time we got to him. Saints seemed to find the ground ot turn our players around 9 times out of 10, meaning their defencise line had longer to get up field.
I've been really disappointed with Frawleys kicking game, hoping it improves.
You're right about hitting the ball at pace though, I cant understand why only a handful of players do it and most of them dont. I cant imagine Smith is telling them not to run onto the ball at pace, so it must be down to the individual players in my mind.