But surely JK will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Suppose he makes a load of changes and we lose to York. Imagine the outcry on here. people saying "this was a must win game, lose this and our seasons over and Kear changes the team massively".

Moving on, I could see Evans coming in if he has no reaction to 80 mins in the reserves, that would shore up the middle a bit. Crossley to come back if fit, and surely Wood for his defence,

Very odd comment.

It's almost as if you think attendance of the game in question is a pre-requisite criteria for the right to have a point of view.

I was actually hoping people would clarify for people like me who weren't in attendance whether or not the referee was garbage or not, but whatever.

Was going to post at more length, but (as normal) John Kear has said it all and he is spot on.

The season now literally rests on winning at York.

Maybe that's enough to get back to putting a full shift in, or maybe not. I've frankly given up guessing, though I did predict that IF lacksadaisical Bulls turned up, Swinton could do us, and frankly they deserved to.

I can give them credit for almost climbing out of the hole, but some of the play in digging that hole was frankly embarrassing. Notably the candyfloss defence for the last Swinton try.

I suppose the squad we've got,
It would be easy to conclude that they don't all have enough mental toughness and resilience to keep on backing up the standard and the resolve and the determination week in Week Out, the best teams do that nearly always, and the challenging teams do that very often, and the mid-table teams blow frustratingly hot and cold because the mental toughness isn't there.

I don't know what else to put it down to as clearly they are not unfit, and they are not lazy, and they don't give up.

I should add that I have always said a strong upper mid table performance this season would be a reasonable achievement. I still think that. We are building for the future, and I've seen a lot of good and entertaining Rugby from us, but sadly not every week. So I'm not suicidal, frustrating though it was.

John Kears comments every week seem to be on the money, he's a far better coach than we were entitled to get, and can clearly see where the deficiencies lie. The question is, how, and how much, can we improve for next season. I remain reasonably optimistic just because some of the stuff we've played of late has been as good or better than anybody else's and I'd be more worried if we couldn't produce at those levels.

I'm still not as sold on JK as some others appear to be.
It's all well and good saying such things in the post match press conference, but he obviously didn't do a good enough job of motivating the players [ibefore[/i the match otherwise he'd never need to say those things once the dust had settled!
He also continues to make some selection choices that leave me scratching my head, I still don't think I've fully forgiven him for the complete balls up he made of our run in at the end of last season - the Workington match at home was a complete disaster because of his team selection.

Just watched the highlights and made me feel even worse than I did yesterday. Despite the fact we played like total crap, its gutting to see some of the decisions go against us.

First Swinton try he is clearly in touch (his hand is actually the first thing to touch the line before the rest of his body follows). Then Magrin grounds the ball under the posts but the try is disallowed. Minchella try can be disputed either way. In slow mo he looks to get downward pressure but can see why its not given live on the field.

Would be interested to see the Kirk sin bin and also the Oakes brainfart towards the end of the game too but either way, a day later can't help but think this might come back and haunt us come end of the season.

After watching those highlights I can’t believe the ref overruled the touchie for Swindon’s first try, bearing in mind the respective positions they held at point of grounding

i have also just watched the highlights the ref is absolutely in need of a visit to supersavers reference the first Swinton and Magrin's try

What was the attendance please?

Don't know if anybody else has mentioned it but how many times did we get caught in possession on the last tackle.

Why are people convinced the ref over ruled the touch judge? He didn’t raise his flag to signal the player was in touch. However the video clearly shows his hand is well over the line. I don’t think Minchella grounded the ball and the Magrin effort is inconclusive from the replay.

York have on paper the toughest run in but they have points in the bag so obviously are favourites to cling onto 5th spot as I expect them to drop down the table in the next few weeks. They are the team we have most chance of catching but we simply have to beat them on Sunday to stay in the race.

3104 according to T& A

I can't really add much to what's already been said. I think it's possibly the worst defensive display i've seen from us under Kear. It reminded me of the sort of games we seemed to have in 2015/16 when we seemed to concede soft tries every week and then rely and rely on our attack to try and get us out of jail.