But dropped ball / penalties is making us defend our own 30/40 constantly. Switch four sets of that for four sets of good ball and the balance of the game changes.

Another thing is that Bentley can’t be advocated by people who also think we lack strike in the pack, you can’t have your cake and eat it. Said before but for me the comparison is Goudemand/Donaldson/o’Connor/Bentley.

Think O’Connor got pushed off another marker tackle for one of Wire’s tries but he was very good other than that.

Some tough decisions needed to elevate us from here, because on current evidence the team isn’t good enough still.

It’s not impossible that Max Simpson comes through at centre this year and we push Mom out to wing, but he looks too slow for wing.

This is the root of the problem.
The passive defence and lack of power in the pack is constantly putting us under pressure and on the back foot.
This means the backs have nothing to work with and are desperately searching for miracle plays from our own half.

We're short of two big forwards, but I believe that the rest of the players are better than what is being served up.
Unfortunately this has to be down to the tactics and how the team are being set up to play.

I know the rose tinted brigade will point to the amount of mistakes we are making and the coach can't do anything about that.....
But I really believe mistakes are made because we are constantly on the back foot in our own 20.
Pressure leads to errors.

I don't believe that errors is the reason why we are constantly defending our own line.
It's the passive defence.
Castleford and Leigh, first half.
We didn't make errors, we just allowed them to march all the way up the pitch every set.

And yes, before anyone points out, I know we won those games.
It may work occasionally against poor teams.
But decent teams, and teams on form will punish us.

Spot on

The 'rose tinted brigade' are taking a break from the negativity on here (I can understand that though).

The game will always be based on earning the right to play through defending with intent high up the field, restricting your opponents yardage and making them kick from deep therefore receiving the kick as far up the field as possible then creating momentum with the same on the other side of the ball. Save for a few examples of heads up rugby and attacking early in the set and from deep, that is how successful teams will always play the game. RS thinks he can do it the other way around, he's wrong.

Well you might call it rose tinted while I’d say half of you on here are ridiculously negative. Different perspectives.

I agree with you that our mistakes and tactics can be related, we’re often pushing the miracle play but it isn’t just that. I also think you all repeat “passive defence” a million times and believe it; actually watching games I see some sets where we are slack yes, but others where we do get up and compete in D. It’s just not as simple as some make out. The fix won’t be as simple as just changing the coach…. again. You didn’t like McDermott, you didn’t like Furner, you didn’t like Agar, you don’t like Smith, you do like any other coach whose side happens to be doing okay one year… well if you’re right and we’ve had 7 years of crap coaching then who appoints the coaches?

The balanced view in my very humble opinion is that we are 2-3 star signings off competing at the top still, and yes RS has some pressure over this next sequence of games. Hudds could be interesting.

We did make errors/give penalties in those games. I’m agreeing that our D has been too soft at times, especially line speed and it looks systemic/tactical. It’s hard to figure out though because we are not consistently “passive”.

Seriously if people look at the tries conceded against Wire, you will find almost every point conceded came directly from our own errors and penalties. You can disagree with those facts if you like. Knock on, knock on, try. Penalty, try. Interception. How is it passive defence to blame when we are defending sets starting in our own 30/40 so frequently?

Yep maybe different perspectives.
What's your view on our kick chase versus the oppositions?

From where I see it, Frawley is always kicking under pressure from the opposition chase.
And then we bag him for kicking straight into hands.

The opposition kicker seems to have all the time in the world.
Look at Fridays game.
The young kid at 7 for Wire.
He received the ball on the 5th, looked up and could not believe the space in front of him.
He ran another 15 metres and placed the kick where he wanted.

What is driving that?
Fitness, laziness, players don't care or they're just dumb?
Or is that what they are being told / coached to do.

I honestly don't get it.
But line speed and kick pressure surely are absolute basics.

I think we’ve got some quality that we didn’t have last year.

I think the pack is unbalanced. Particularly in the back row, but also light in the front row.

The whole passive defence I just can’t decide if it’s a tactic or a mentality thing. We’ve been able to get up and in faces so to speak, but we don’t/can’t do it consistently. Mentality wise, we can pull ourselves out of a hole, but often crumble when we’ve got players missing. We make too many errors, and I’m not convinced all of those come from pushing the ball.

I like smith, but as a coach a lot of it falls at your door whether it’s a tactic or not. I don’t think he’s getting the best out of the squad. Dare I say there might be some Powell comparisons here…he’s put the broom through the squad and we might need the next coach to push us over the hump as Tony smith did.

I actually agree Sethster and I’m a defence first kinda guy; I’m just not sure that RS has this evil master plan to make us defend badly. We are just not playing well enough either side of the ball.

If we do one thing, we need to tighten up the first 20. We’re constantly making stupid mistakes and then overloading ourselves in D, which compounds everything. Worryingly, the reserves were just the same yesterday.

Yes I’ve noticed that too I agree; although even when Frawley has had time I’ve not been blown away - although his attacking kicks are pretty good (Newman try for example).

We are losing the pressure game most weeks. I don’t love our line speed at times but it isn’t always bad - I was watching closely against Wire. It was rubbish at times against Cas.

There is an argument to conserve energy at times, in various facets of the game because a knackered player is an ineffective one. It’s a very hard game, especially for the big men. But you have to play tight and precise if you’re going to play that game and we are failing; and there are consequences of taking shortcuts.

Most of the sky comms team say we play passive defence. Wilkin is always commenting on it. Where’s that attitude in defence come from? Ultimately the coach carries the can. At the moment RS is not getting a tune from the players and hasn’t done for the last season and a bit.

Prior to the Warrington game, the defence was good in terms of not conceding line breaks and not conceding many trys. It's the imapact it's having on our attack that's the issue for me. You won't win many games, especially against the best teams when you're playing most of the game in your own 40m zone.

The errors are a major cause for concern, but I'd question why there doesn't seem to any improvement in this area over the last 12 months. To attack the way Smith wants to attack, the basic pass and catch skills, in particular have to be of a very high standard, and frankly, they don't seem to have improved.
I actually like Smith and don't think he should go, he'll be here as long as we're still in and around the playoffs, but there some major issues with his tactical approach that haven't improved or need addressing.

I think the idea of passive defence has some sound logic to it, going back to my national conference playing days, the defence is only as fast/strong as the weakest unfittest player. A good set line but giving up some territory whilst preserving energy is better than rushing up with gaps in the line leading to penalties missed tackles line breaks. Trouble is we still do all the latter anyway, so it achieves nothing, we give away too much territory snd end up doing twice ad much tacking anyway.

Also how many drop outs do we concede its been like 5-6 a game for last 2 games.

It’s a fine line isn’t it? I know I keep on banging on about him but if you watch McDonnell’s tackle technique he is always working hard to put the player in possession on his back, which is effortful but slows the PTB legitimately. This seems a good investment of energy.

Holroyd on the other hand runs around getting involved in too many tackles sometimes I think. He’s an aggressive defender but he almost always gets sucked in to heavy sets on D because the side generally is making errors and he’s one of the defensive rocks who bears the consequence. Then he has too little bite on offense (or we keep playing our big men too flat to the line so they’re constantly being creamed by three middles before they can get momentum).

Two high quality middle players would make a really big difference but we have to utilise them better too.