I don't disagree with any of that but I don't think they're excuses. Tiny squad + lack of size and quality = players playing with injuries as Bullseye said and lads who are far from world beaters anyway losing form, making errors and dropping off tackles. An excuse is something that's not really true, whereas I think these are genuine reasons why the best sides are way ahead of us over the course of a season.

I'm with M@islebugs on this one. The point is that for us to win matches against most of the other SL teams requires us to be perfoming at 90-100% of our ability every week, and to be as fit as we can be to do this.

The small, cheap squad is filled with players that other clubs would not or did not want. Only a small number of our suqad would be wanted by any clubs above us in the league. If we drop off at all in terms of performance levels, we get beat. The better teams with bigger squads and more money to pay better players, cna play relatively poorly and still beat us.

If we had an extra 500K to spend, would it be different? Of course it would. If you've ever played the game, you will accept that when you are playing against better quality players, or fitter players, you need to be 100%. when you are trying so hard, you make more mistakes as you are trying to play above your own level. Knock ons occur, fatigue sets in, defence gets ripped apart.

facts of RL life!

We know we are not full of money,and the robbery of the sky money is criminal,but we are not only spending two thirds of the salary cap because of it.

Basic mistakes is the thing I am on about,basic skills should be the least of the players problems

Basic skills suffer when you're fatigued/playing injured against a bigger/stronger opponent.

It's harder to tackle correctly when you're knackered or protecting an injury (see Foster versus Hudds).

It's harder to execute a perfect pass or catch when the defence is on top of you and that's happened a lot when we've been beaten up front due to a lack of props.