What's he done / doing?

The thing with this team and this was prominent when Sinfield and Peacock were still here, is that it often took them to reach a point where people wrote them off before coming good. I just sensed in the last week or so from McDermott and some players that they might've reached a point where privately they are going for the 2011-esque "people have written you off" angle.....whether they can pull that off though without certain players no longer there and several more injured is different matter though.

Previous weeks the mood was like "oh well we can't afford to let that gap get any bigger to teams above" and basically downbeat and even a bit almost feeling sorry for themselves and thinking that they would've just rolled into the 2016 season and carried on where they left off in 2015 in terms of how they were playing. Last week McDermott started to go on about how he and the group is looking forward to this situation they've found themselves in now as it's presented them with the chance to do something special if they're somehow able to turn this around and reach the top 4 (which it obviously would be because ATM it looks massively unlikely).

Even though the performances weren't good in most games their was an effort there but it was kind of an auto-pilot effort that can be misconstrued as no effort. I think if the effort really was truely lacking in a RL match then the nature of the game means you'll get cricket scores against you if all effort has gone. Against Hull it looked for the first time this year a real determined focused effort that we saw on Friday. Again the question as mentioned above is whether this current group can keep that going now on a weekly basis without certain players on the pitch.

If we were to make the top 4 from this position it would definitely blow 2011 and 2012 out of the water imo but i can't see us getting close TBH.top 8 would be an achievement in itself from here on in.

I am quietly confident regards the CC though, it really is something we can realistically win with top players returning within the next month or two.As long as we don't draw Wigan or Warrington away that is first up! we will see in a few hours.

It does look unlikely and we'll have to pick up wins at the likes of Saints which is usually a bonus if we win there given our record over the years. If we do though we are suddenly 4 points behind them which is catchable and good chance they'd be around 4th spot come season end.

Think what could give us a chance IF we can find a way to win the next two away games is that whilst the top 3 looks like being Wire, Catalans and Wigan, I think fourth spot will be a bit of a scrap by the looks of it with no team able to really cement their place with teams taking an even amount of points of each other. I can see 4th spot ending up with around 4/6 less points this year than what Saints managed in 2015.