Under noble we had the likes of ben harris, scott naylor who were both brilliant at defending but could also bust a tackle, the other side used to do the creating.

If teams went down the middle they got smashed by baloo, vagana, peacock etc..if they went left they got hurt by naylor..if right they had to run at vainikolo, hape..

Now teams arent scared off who they run at bradford as we havent got that kind of team anymore..our props are weak and not aggressive enough..they dont scare the oppo so they just run at them..some of the attempted tackles wouldnt win a game of bulldogs charge let alone a game of rugby

Flash in the pan it seems sadly. One good defensive performance all season shows how bad we are.

Noble had great players at his disposal. But that doesn't make a great team. He instilled discipline, pride. Teams feared Bradford. Now all they fear when they play us is that they might not be one of the players who scores against us. Under Noble, I wouldn't even say we were an aggressive team, but we bullied teams off the park.

If Noble came to coach us now i guarantee our defence would tighten up. We wouldn't win the league, but we would make the play-offs, and the opposition would know they've been in a game with us. We would be competitive most of the season, not just against Leeds and when we've been mullered the week before.

I don't want a Potter sacked debate after one game of the season, but after yet another poor season, followed by two pathetic performances against Catalans & Hull, he has got some work to do. At the moment he's not doing a good enough job. Hopefully he will pull it off.

It's also easier to defend if you have the ball instead of the opposition. Didn't we aimlessly kick on third tackle last week in the second half.

Very well said, absolutely Noble would have coached every team we've put out in the past 3 seasons to the play offs.
Yes, Noble did inherit a great team but teams don't coach themselves and he took us to heights that no recent previous coach for us has been able to.

And those that say would struggle to build a team, look at what he left at Wigan for the new coach to work with.

All of which begs the question as to why he has been out of work for 18 months - despite apparently having applied for several vacancies

Just saying

Yes he did work wonders at Pieland, but it was in the days of "Uncle Mo" when the SC applied to everyone else bar them, till they got caught but dragged us down with them

Nobby would still have struggled to do much better with the Bulls due to the now lack of finances compared to what he was used to and he never volunteered to come back apart, from giving Macca advice

Karl Harrison would definatly bring a HUGE shock, players would think twice before being lathargical on the pitch if they knew they had him to deal with at Half Time

16 out of 17 from last week yet a totally different defensive performance. How come? Genuine question.

The pitch was described as a mud bath. That evens the teams out. Not taking anything away from our defence, but the real test will come next week against Wigan when the pitch isn't like the a swamp

Pitch wasn't actually too bad. Certainly muddy but calling it a mud bath is going too far imo

We were better than Cas up front and that meant we could control the ruck. When Cas moved it wide we had Chase and Orr well covered.

We should be well used to inconsistency by now, jusy hope we start to see more performances that have the guts and commitment we showed today.

That's what makes the difference - winning the collision. We hardly ever did that against the massive Catalans pack, but as I said earlier in the week our forwards were far more evenly matched against Cas - even without Elima and Manase (acknowledging Cas had some missing too).

Easy, our pack beat their pack. Not a walkover, mind you, but overall our pack came out quite handsomely on top. Whitehead, in particular, had a lot to do with that. He really is a talent.

Let's hope these positive trends continue. I have given up hoping that we will ever stop making dumb mistakes and giving up cheap ground and possession, I reckon it must be the personnel we've got aren't technically good enough. It can't be either a jinx, co-incidence or bad luck to keep making the same mistakes year on year. Still, we do have the ability, and this year seemingly the will, to overcome shooting ourselves repeatedly in the foot, at least against the lesser sides. It will still cost us big time if we do it against the better teams, but the we aren't dreaming of a top four spot.

The encouraging thing was that it looks like we do have the half backs to take advantage of it when we are on the front foot, and Gale in particular continued to progress, he looks the best we've had for a while on the limited games so far. And Sammut looks a very handy acquisition.

The other encouraging thing was, like against Cats, we again looked up for it, and again worked very hard the full 80, keeping going right to the end.