In terms of our personnel, the current Widnes team and even more frustratingly, the Salford team who's attack long coached, are far more entertaining than us with the ball in hand yet they don't have super stars. It's not like what everyone's demanding is a crazy Leeds type offload style; a more entertaining way of playing that doesn't involve 3 drives and kick isn't too much for this group of players.

Again, this is a subjective judgement which has no meaning outside individually derived frames of reference.

Whilst I'm sure most people can arrive at some broad definition of "entertaining football" - the moment we switch to specifics consensus goes out the window and the subtleties of individual preference hold sway.

Perhaps if people spent more time explaining what they think constitutes entertaining football rather than expecting everyone to know intuitively what IT is we might get somewhere with this question. But I wouldn't bet money on it.

Anything that deviates from the unimaginative, 3 one out drives and a kick straight to the fullback would be a fine start. I wouldn't mind if we played an effective forward game with little tip ons, dummy runners and running in pairs, but we don't even do that.

As I said in my post, it's not the Leeds style I think people want, it's a less painful one than 3 one out drives and a poor kick.

While you can't put a concrete definition on 'entertaining rugby', you would have to be some optimist to think what we're producing at the minute goes anywhere near anyone's individual definition.

I hope it changes on Friday.

This isn't very helpful - not least because one of the first criticisms which pops up in the wake of any run of bad form by any club you club you care to mention (after "incompetent"/"cheating" refs) is "unimaginative play".

I'd argue it's more a function of psychological stress than any specific gameplan. When faced with challenging circumstances human beings are genetically pre-programmed to behave more conservatively. It's a survival mechanism which given our position as the dominant form of life on this planet it seems to work.

Why exactly our players have gone into their shell so early in the season is an interesting question to which I don't know the answer.

It's odd that our players suffer this 'psychological stress' A) more often than most teams and B) when we're winning, losing or drawing.

Nonsense. It is our pre-determined tactic and gameplan, as confirmed by both Jon Wilkin and Sean Long last week. Ultra-conservative is our style of play, regardless of opposition or position in the match.

It wouldn't be such a bad thing if we were actually any good at it, but 8 defeats in our past 12 games show that this tactic isn't working.

It's a perfectly recognisable phenomenon we see repeated in the workplace each day. It's possible that the players are afraid of making mistakes because of the way the coaching staff responds to them making mistakes. I'm not saying this is the reason for them keeping things so tight because there are other possibilities. The point is - we don't know.

Playing conservatively and playing no other tactics than five drives and a kick [iare not the same thing[/i. I can believe Cunningham prefers the former (for several reasons) but you are going to have to provide significantly more evidence to prove to me that he only wants the latter.

In that scenario, the coaches would be to blame. I'm just happy you've accepted that there is a conservative style on show. Even if you are putting it down to a psychological fear that for whatever reason doesn't seem to affect most SL sides as badly as us.

For me either play more expansively our really work on our forwards game and turn it into an effective one. The longer he sticks with this current non-effective style, farcically trying to state it's similar to the saints of old, the more criticism he will take.

They would certainly bear responsibility. But I'm only speculating and there could easily be other explanations.



I don't recall saying we play anything other than conservatively. I think I've been pretty consistent over the last two seasons in saying our strength is largely based in the forwards and we play to capitalise on this fact.

Would I prefer to see us zipping the ball from flank to flank? Sure. But to do that effectively and consistently (the hallmarks of a championship side) you need the players. We DON'T HAVE those players and any gameplan which ignores this fact is likely to end in catastrophe.

Whilst it's possible to play poker and win by pretending you have cards you haven't been dealt - it doesn't work so well in team sports.

But unlike cards, you are not dealt your players. You are free to cut them loose and sign some new ones that can play the way you want. Personally I think we're trying to play like an NRL side, but have awful players and a rookie coach who is in the job as he thought it would be fun rather than because he's got any coaching ability.