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.