The lack of direction in attack and the fragile moral are both down to the same thing - leadership on the pitch. We don't have enough of it and in the right positions. I'm hoping some of the signings we've got are improvements but so far we've not added any real leaders.

Yep. We lacked leadership all over yesterday. When things got tough it needed players to step up and nobody did really. There's plenty of talk off the field but nobody actually follows it up where it matters.

Aye. Once the heads go down, it is not a pretty sight.

Bring back promotion and relegation. The team have no pride in the shirt and noting to fight for. If their income was at risk it might be different.

No passion, no heart and no pride in wearing the shirt (bar a couple of exceptions yesterday). If Potter IS getting his head turned by offers from Oz and he wants to go then just let him go. The coach is no different to a player, if their heart is not 100% on the jobs and they would rather be elsewhere then it is best for all concerned to sever all ties and move on amicably.

I called for Potter last season, thinking he was a good appointment but he has been a complete failure. If that had been a McNamara team then I am sure the criticism would have been FAR worse. McNamara was a complete dud but Potter has taken on a job with very low requirements needed to be met in order to improve on his predeccessor. So far he has failed spectacularly.

The only question I would have if he did Return to Oz is who would stake their reputation on taking over us at this time. A club in major decline with clear problems behind the scenes and an organisation that smacks of complete amateurism. The job is a poisoned chalice.

Can't see a way out either. It's become a habit with too many. Would love us to sign a couple of proven players who can provide the leadership needed but expect we can't afford them. While Gale and Sammut might offer a bit of pace that is needed neither are the calming steady influence we need to address this problem of us going awol as soon as something goes wrong.

Can't see what changing the coach would do given that he'd have to work with the dross we've got and he can only afford to recruit flawed bargain basement players, as ME says its a poisoned chalice. Potter's got a good record unlike most of our players so that's where the blame lies.

I also wonder what they had to say for themselves on twitter last night. Are they actually bothered???

I was at West Bowling Sunday morning watching my son play, and there was more effort & committment from the under 8's and 9's there than I saw on TV Sunday evening.

How the mighty have fallen....and I can't see how you can climb to the top again.
£60 tickets are fine, but pay peanuts and you get to watch chimps

Hope you all support the 'Yorkshire' team at Wembley

What about the argument that there is no such thing as bad troops, just bad officers?

I was talking earlier to a friend of mine, who is pretty clued up about these things (and for good reason). What that friend suggested was that the problem with most antipodean coaches - and those trained by them - is that they are primarily tactics/analysis-orientated. Most British coaches - and especially in the lower leagues - are more "rip into them before the match, rip into them at half time, but be a bloody good motivator and - the good ones - build the lads into a team off the park as well as on it, so they all play for and do things for each other.

That got me thinking a fair bit while driving (as you do).

Where the coach has plenty of money to spend, maybe that becomes less important since you can rely on individuals to lift the team on the park and come up with the moments of brilliance and patches of supreme effort that win matches. Where funds are tighter, and the tream you do have has to punch above its weight, the team-motivation aspect, the team-spirit, becomes crucial. That is how you get a quart out of a pint pot.

Macca was clearly unable to do that. Maybe too much of that tactics/analysis again...? I'm increasingly wondering if Potter is any better able to? Worth thinking about, by way of balance? If he IS, surely the players we have are not as bad collectively as we have seen too manty times this season, so what ELSE is the cause?

The problem is clearly the quality of players we have. Hull KR are struggling for the 8 and have a number of players who would WALK into out team. Just in the back Fox, Welham, Webster, Dobson and Green would start in our 13, and we certainly dont have people running the lines that Galea and Newton did.

Worrying for me is the fact that we have signed 3 halfs since the start of the year, all from bottom 3 teams and 2 werent automatic starters, this isnt the way to change us around imo

twitter was very quiet last night.

Can I directly ask you, or anyone, what you were all thinking at half time yesterday? Speaking for myself, I was fairly pleased. It wasn't perfect, and we should have built up a commanding lead, but there had been seemingly plenty of heart, pride and passion. Some committed, hard, tackling. Some determined scrambling and chasing when things went wrong.Others may disagree, but that was how it seemed to me, and still does.

I would agree that the second half does fit the description, but my head can't get round why they can show these attributes one half, but not the next. Maybe I was seeing things in the first half that were not there, but must say that when watched the vid last night, obviously knowing the result, I am still sure it was a very good first half, we dominated and were the better team.



We're not in major decline, though. Things haven't got any worse since last year when we bottomed out. We are in a pretty bad place, but the toilet we are in is, IMHO, not as smelly as this time last year and does have some more promising cleaning staff. Including Potter, if you continue to believe McNamara was a dud and the root cause of all evils. The decline was before 2011. We have certainly not improved much. I would say a lot of the rugby has - at maddening times - been much better in 2011 than what we were capable of 2009-2010 even if the overall results have not been better.

I would say we have some very promising younger players, with a clear lack of motivational leaders and an absence of consistent threat or organisation at half back. If I were a coach outside looking in, I am sure I would fancy it. There are not that many jobs in the world at the top level and there are hardly any clubs likely to have any more to spend than us bearing in mind especially Imagerightsgate. So I wouldn't view it as a poisoned chalice, really. A very recently top northern hemisphere club, still a big name, still getting 10K crowds and with some decent playing staff, and a job where you can't really do anything but improve - where's the downside?

As all know, I've been principally blaming the players for years, while not exempting the coaching staff, and when I read so many slating the team for apparent lack of effort, pride, motivation, call it what you will, this seems to now be a pretty common view.

I did not think McNamara was a dud coach any more than I think Potter is, and while McNamara did not have any history to cite in his defence, Potter does, and he showed at Catalans what he can do, he showed at Saints he can do a top level club too, so I think any reasonable person has to conclude that the head coach is not the problem.

I'm sure the causes must be many and varied, but to me, the big factor has been, and remains, our failure to solve the halfbacks problem. We can't, of course, remotely afford them, but settle a top class 6 and 7 into that squad and things would be different. But we would have been a lot better had we not let Deacon go without thinking through the replacements (yes, bad luck with Awford etc etc) and the fact is for some seasons we have never had a decent 6, and have really struggled at scrum half.

Everybody else has got better halves than us, and you may disagree but I would have bet, if Dobson had been playing for us, we would have won. And he's hardly top class.

To back up your point - I did think dobson was ordinary yesterday. Kicking/options on the last were poor.

There would be no shortage of decent coaches lining up for the job. Maybe not of the quality that the top 4 can afford but Cas have talked to most of the following about their less glamorous position - Noble, Kear, Morgan, Gentle, Millward, Anderson, Sharp. I am sure Agar will be available shortly also.