I suspect that at least one side that has been well placed for most of the year will drop out off the play-offs completely. Maybe Quins, maybe Wakey, maybe even Rovers.

And?

Tossing a coin is down to luck and nothing to do with ability.

TBF this season the decent performances have been outnumbered by the poor ones and we've never seriously looked like changing that. That's the frustrating thing, time and again we make the same mistakes and show no signs of learning or improving. Every so often we pull a good performance out of the bag but then spoil it by putting in 2 or three bad ones. The pattern of the season can be seen in the space of 80min where good play is confounded by periods where the team switch off or make laughable errors.

We have a core of good professionals who are capable of better than this and who have performed consistently in the past. Trouble is we also have several players who are sub standard but nobody putting any pressure on them to perform. Meanwhile the coach seems unable to stop the rot.

I think it's time for me to predict that if we make the playoffs I'll go to the first game painted red, amber and black, change my name by deed poll to Steve McNamara, and flaunt my naked self on top of the Coral Stand to the tune of Woolly Bully.

[sizeIf that doesn't get the team performing nothing will[/size

No, but if you had the ability to win half your games, you wouldn't necessarily go WLWLWLWLW all year.

Obviously.

But if you only have the ability to win half of your games you need to be taking advantage of the "easier" games at home in order to help you on the way to reaching your goal.

Two wins at home all season and losses to such quality as Castleford and the Celtic Crusaders at Odsal will hardly help.

In order to win half of our games we need to turn a 6.1.11 current record into a 13.1.13 record. Not gonna happen.

True, and thatmay well happen. I just don't think any of the top 7 can now be caught by Bradford, although one of them could well be replaced by one of the teams currently 9th - 11th.

But the wins at Wire and Saints and at home to Leeds go in the other column.

If by not gonna happen you mean unlikely to happen I'd agree. But I think there's still a slim chance, for the reasons outlined. To provide further evidence, Cas and Hull KR could each end up with around 50/50 records as a result of a good run coupled with form not dissimilar to ours in their other games. If the run can happen in games 1-9 or 9-18, why not 18-27?

Like I said, unlikely but possible. Which is why I'd be interested in seeing odds.

He doesn't have the players around him to carry him. He needs time & space, he gets neither now. His shortcomings are now brutally exposed. You can console yourselves that he is the greatest scrum half of the 20th century.

I remember a time many years ago, when Leeds Utd, having won the last ever Division One title the year before, were garbage the year after and almost got relegated. However, despite being useless pretty much every week, towards the end of the season they played their socks off against Man Utd and almost beat them. Alex Ferguson blasted the Leeds players afterwards saying their performance was an insult to their boss as it showed how well they could play when they wanted to, whereas their performances over the rest of the season could get Howard Wilkinson the sack. One wonders if the same may be applicable here - I'm not absolving Macnamara from any blame, don't get me wrong, however in both games against Saints and Leeds the Bulls players have showed what they are capable of - too many times against other teams this year they have gone missing. Brings into question what percentage of the blame lies with the coach and what percentage lies with the players.

Not sure. We showed in the laft 15 mins of the first half yesterday what we are capable of. It's just they then imploded in the second half. OK Cas got a lucky break with the first of the three tries as it should have been a penalty. But they had no excuse for the second and third of that period.

Too inconsistent this season even within the same game never mind a number of games.

Now I know I said give the youngsters longer than 4 mins but even I think 6 years is too young

My apologies.

I got the impression you were ebing sarcastic.

It's as inspiring as a Paul Medley speech.