Trouble is, we seem to have forgotten the scoring bit!

Looking at the Wire game we seemed really good at creating tries.

"own" tries!

Perhaps we should copyright the phrase

I have emailed the club with a new tactic. Whenever Herbert is about to kick on the last, nearly all the team drops [iback[/i 50 metres. That way, the chances of someone collecting the rebound are reasonable, and although I understand the chances they will cough it up on the first tackle are still high, sometimes we would start a next set of 6 only 20 metres or so behind the point of the kick.

Please keep this under your hats, though, as I want to make sure we surprise Wigan with the ploy, which I've not seen done before.

I watched the game back last night. We didn't seem as bad on tv. Watching it live we were woeful, but we seemed more average on tv. Why is that?

Had some of the things we tried come off, then we would have been applauding an ok performance. For example, Lynch's break could have been a try, Bateman came really close twice, Herbert (I think) did neat kick to wing that Paddy was close to, there was a kick through that Elliot was cm away from, Koppy's disallowed try, etc. It could have been 60 or 70 with those.

We are seem to be just a few centimetres away from a good attacking performance.

The defence though. Good god.

Attacking wise we did better but we were helped by a Fax defence that was even worse than ours. Can you see another SL side defending that badly?

Us?

Oh, you mean another one? No, not at all!

And yet, 5 of them did (because we won 4 and drew 1). A curious fact.

Christ it must have been bad live, because the TV viewing was painful.

Indeed, but we did that with some players who are sadly out of action and with a willingness to tackle that's for some reason disappeared.

Well then, maybe it's time we started work on drawing up a list of those players who we, the fans, think do put it all in in defence, and those that don't. Or if we start to name names, will a super injunction follow?

It was awful live. Think the tv version after the watershed.

I think that the players do genuinely go out there to give 100% but as soon as things get tough it starts to fall apart. Every player is guilty of making poor decisions in defence or getting knocked off too easily, same as how when we beat Cas every player could claim to have worked hard and defended well.

The patacake we played versus Fax, Warrington and Salford looked to me like a team playing as a bunch of individuals. Versus Wire and Salford those individual seemed resigned to defeat and went through the motions. I don't think anyone can escape blame for that.

To name one player, L'Strange, makes an awful lot of attempted tackles and puts in a lot of effort. I do wonder sometimes though if that's misdirected sometimes or if either he or his teammates are capable of working together to do better in defence.

L'Estrange was the one that first sprung to mind too as the one always getting stuck in. It seems to me that the first 10 mins of each half we are there in numbers - 2/3 men in the tackle, then after that it drops off. Is it down to fitness? Surely not.
Technique seems to be off a lot of the time too. We found it nigh on impossible to put Worrincy down on Sunday, he was bouncing off tackles all over, but it looked like the defending players were all going in for the same tackle and getting in each others way. That must be down to the defensive coach.

Could be, but more likely it's some players are just better at it than others. Once we miss enough tackles and the score starts to blow out the heads then drop and we concede further and in the end we aren't in the tackle in numbers at all, everyone starts to play as an individual. The Salford game was a classic example. We started both halves ok with fairly solid defence but after a few mistakes it spiralled out of control and the defence went like Swiss cheese.



It probably does come down to coaching and looks to me again like the team not defending as a unit or communicating enough. A team that doesn't talk in defence is always asking for it. Whatever, the players don't seem to have confidence at the moment.