The Allez rant is looking somewhat personal.

Can't fathom the KC hate. Personally I did not want him to be coach last year. I thought it was to early and he should have been tried and tested elsewhere first.

However, I can't have too many complaints about the season so far. Plenty of youngsters getting their chances to shine. He has coped remarkably well with the injuries on the roster and managed the team pretty well. I think there has been on outburst against the youngsters that I would not have approved of. But if a coach says one thing to hack you off in a year that is no bad thing. Tony Smith is a very experienced coach and he still comes out with pap every now and then.

Also when comparing coaches. TS had a team at the start of the year that was touted for top spot. So KC is hardly doing a poor job surpassing all other coaches in the league apart from maybe Brian McDermott.

Also last night the players hardly helped themselves. There were brainfarts all over that feild. That is down to individuals.

The way to fix it would be to say that :

1) anybody who goes down with a head injury, play stops and the player is removed from the field for a minimum 10 minutes - even if they subsequently get up and say they're ok.

2) anybody going down with a non-head injury, if they are not interfering with play - play on (unless it's an obvious stretcher case like a broken leg)

3) anybody going down with a non-head injury who IS interfering with play, mandatory removal from the field for 10 minutes for "treatment".

I agree that we do not want this gamesmanship in rugby league. Refs can't take risks with head injuries because they're not visible. But with all other injuries, it is very obvious if the injury is serious or not. If serious, by all means stop the game. If not, then send them to the sidelines instantly. If they refuse to go, or miraculously recover, bin them.

LMS was a loon last night. Great game going forward, but probably equalled any yardage gained with the penalties he gave away.

When other good teams have their tails up in defence, Wigan in particular, they can trap the opposition on their line with aggressive line speed, when ever we get into that groove, we've given a penalty away for offside by the end of the set. LMS is possibly the worse culprit for this. Either he's too eager getting off the line, he' to lazy to get back properly in the first place or he's too dim to realise one of the above.

I agree with you that this would be the best way of dealing with it, but I don't see that approach being adopted. The whole rationale of the new concussion rules seems to be to take human intuition out of the equation entirely in order to minimise risk. Having made that move I can't see the RFL then allowing referees to decide whether someone is putting it on or not. I think something like Roy's suggestion might be necessary if there's going to be a workable solution to the gamesmanship (or 'cheating', as we should probably call it) that's creeping in this season.

I remember in my first team (RU) debut, I was getting up from a ruck at a stoppage in play. We were near our line and under pressure and my captain was stood next to me, he put his hand on my shoulder, pushed me back down and told me to stay there. 30 seconds for a quick check from our physio and we'd regrouped well enough to defend the line.

A little bit of gamesmanship is always going to exist in some form, and to be too pedantic about it is a bit misery, but last night LMS was at in constantly. Even the commentary team were taking the mick out of him, saying he gets injured everytime there's a drop out. Did I also hear Silverwood tell him to stop play acting at one point?

Surely the biggest threat to play acting would be to win the ball and then play act and have the decision about winning the ball overturned, resulting in a penalty that was key to us losing the game?

Oh!

You saw a different last 10 minutes to me. Cas looked threatening every time they got the ball and we didn't. Simple as.

Agreed, we deserve to lose games if our players are going to behave like that. Embarrassing.

All the more disappointing because if you take away his ridiculous penalties he had a cracking game in a poor pack performance.

If Castleford looked threatening it was because we conspired to give them as much possession as possible through repeated acts of stupidity, not to mention the fact that fortune smiled on them again and again.

Bad enough that McDonnell collapsed in a heap and then Percival got sin-binned needlessly. But the real killer was Swift's injury. Yes, it robbed us of another back. But its inconvenience was nothing next to the lift it gave to our opponents.

With 70 minutes gone Castleford were beginning to look tired. Couple this with the fact that Saints are always strong in the final stanza when we usually bring our big forwards to bear. Unfortunately we were hit with the worst of all double-whammies when Swift went down and then remained ON THE PITCH for the best part of ten minutes. This gave Cas' flagging forwards all the time in the world to recuperate whilst we lost the fitness advantage we'd worked so hard to develop throughout the game.

As stated, WE were a bigger threat to our own defence than Castleford were.

I've not seen anyone mention it but did we finish the Cas game with 11 men? Percival got sin binned and didn't come back on. We also had Swift and McDonnell go off injured but I don't know if we had any interchanges left to change the two of them, or does it not count for injuries?

Disagree. You lot tired in the second half not us. Lynch Millington Mcmeekan were anything but flagging. Our pack dragged us back into the game. And overall in the second 40 we were pretty dominent. You can question your team all you like and lms was a clown in that last 10 but our fitness has been superb last 3 weeks, in essence that fitness has seen us see out 3 very tight games against good opposition home and away. (Not to mention nil a team in the second half at magic).

Aye, there was a team blowing but it wasn't Cas.

Agree. Disagree. That's your choice.

Without running the game again sans Swift's ten minute break the question is still up in the air.

Ultimately we only have ourselves to blame for wrapping up two points and presenting them to you tied with a bow.

Stupid and unprofessional.

I will meet you half way and agree with the latter.