Have spotted that too, we really do strugglewith basics in defence sometimes.

The annoying thing is we clearly know what the right things to do are, as we've done them on a number of occasions this year. Hair pullingly inconsistent.

......turn up at LP on time on the right day and errrr; that's it

Wellens and Lance had a bad game. However, if you take them out the team you're left with no leadership, no creativity or spark for the playoffs.

Compared to what?

From what I have seen in the past few weeks, we have no leadership, no creativity and no spark.

This team is spineless, it lacks courage, ambition, desire, heart and brains.

If you look at the stats the players we complain about in Wellens, Wilkin and Hohaia have the highest try assists in the team with the exception of Roby, you might might be able to drop one of them but not all of them. As it is you have got to pick Wellens every time with Hohaia, Wilkin and Walsh being out long term or end of season. Its also worth noting that these same players have some of the highest tackle counts, for me the pack are not doing a fair share of the work to give our temporary halves some energy, space and time.
Its the usual observation we look good in theory but in practice we have no work ethic and team work, leadership is Walsh nobody else has that quality.

Just checking, is this the team that has won 19/26 and that sits at the top of SL with a game to go, or some other team?

Shiit the bed, Bradford must be worse than I thought then

When your hooker makes 60 tackles in a single match, it is right to criticise the other forwards.

Shhh, leave us to our spoilt toddler overreactions

But it's not an overreaction is it. We're in a completely false position in the table. If it were first past the post, does anyone seriously believe we'd be top? Leeds deliberately coast along and Warrington have been pacing themselves this season as well. We'd be forth or fifth if everyone was going all out, as will be exposed in the Play Offs. People, particularly Eamon and the positivists on here and Redvee will point to the fact that Walsh and Lomax are out as an excuse, but it wouldn't have mattered if they were fit. This side and particularly this pack simply doesn't stand up when it matters.

I agree that the pack particularly has been unacceptably inconsistent this year, although the lengthy lay-offs for Wilkin, Amor and Manu have to have played a significantly disruptive role.

However, I think you go too far in dismissing the impact of Walsh's absence. It's not just this last few weeks he's been absent. This whole campaign was built around Walsh, who showed in the first month that he is easily the best player in superleague. If he had remained injury free, then our team would probably have developed those "unthinking" rhythms which power the best teams, where players are in the right places because they are used to going to those places. Even without that season-long practise, if he was injury-free now, I would confidently tip us to go to the Grand Final.

We can certainly argue that we should have been able to cope with injury disruption better (although being top of the league isn't a bad answer to that accusation), and we can certainly argue that we should have had more back-up in key positions (although losing your first 3 choice halfbacks simultaneously is pretty unforeseeable). But to argue that the long-term absences of the best player in the competition, plus our main attacking back, our strike prop-forward (Amor), plus our pack leader and replacement half (Wilkin), doesn't excuse the outcome of the year is going too far. It really does.

There are issues : the forwards need more consistency, the backs need to sort out their defensive frailties, and we need to work out what the hell is going wrong with our conditioning that our players are so prone to very long-term injuries. But while the GF is almost certainly beyond us now, we need to keep our heads screwed on and accept the reality that we're finishing at the top of the pile despite a massive injury-caused handicap. That doesn't make the whole team and all its players pants.

Yet we've took more points off any other team in the current top 8 and top of the league with one game to go.

Maybe the other teams are just as bad as us and the quality has dropped dramatically.

I think we got a few lucky 50/50 calls in the first 6 matches and played a couple of teams off form. Leeds looked unbeatable in that period until a Saints wekened side beat them.
Its a funny season this year, lots of teams not putting the effort similar to Saints making Superleague really poor with some unpredictable score lines.
If we had Walsh playing for most of the season the LLS would have stayed out of the box a couple of weeks ago, if the top teams had all there playmakers missing like Saints again the LLS would have been heading our way.

The quality of Superleague is the worst its ever been which has seen a shift of prepping for the play offs
having increasing value.