When I heard him say this at the forum I was a bit surprised, makes me wonder what the fekk we were doing in 2011.

Sunday we looked sharper in the warm up but clearly lacking energy in the game. It must be harder when the pack is outmuscled but I saw little evidence of our increased fitness. A couple of players looked lighter but there was no increase in speed or agility. Our line speed was poor at times and we were caught around the ruck by not being back in position, these are symptoms of us not being fit enough.

This is what I've just posted in the Castleford game thread:

I have slight concerns about our fitness levels.

In the second half yesterday we had four repeat sets of six (two from penalties and one from the GLDO forced) to attack the Catalan line.
So while we sustained this onslaught on the Dragons defensive line for a good three minutes and ended up throwing a forward pass before Millard knocked forward with Crookes open to the line, we came away with nothing.

But the worrying trend was that after the visitors efforts in defence it was us who looked unfit as from the 10m scrum Henderson and Dureau attacked us down the middle as we struggled to get back the required 10m.

In this possession the Catalan Dragons went from defending four sets of six on their own line to going 60m up field and then on the last tackle 30m out from the Bradford line, Dureau once again attacked through the middle on the power play before showing his astuteness with the boot to provide the cross field chip over Sammut for Millard to score out wide.

Why were we not fitter last year then?

We didn't look as fit as the oppostion team yesterday though.

The question is how much of it is physical fitness, and how much of it is mental sharpness, awareness of the game and - dare I say it - attitude?

As said a couple of players have shed some weight, but they certainly don't look any fitter. No point sacrificing the size if there are no benefits.

Well they certainly didn't tire themselves out tackling yesterday

Its all relative, I guess I am 30% fitter than last year. But still 99% not as fit as most rugby league players.

The Bulls are 30% fitter relative to themselves last year. Oh dear...

I have had a day to calm down....

I did think they looked fitter yesterday. The squad seemed to slide across the pitch really well (with the exception of their last try). But if it wan't for the slack defence in the middle, the score would have been much more even.

I remember watching the Catalans, re-grouping in the first half after we had kicked and their forwards looked spent, hands on hips, slowly walking back into the attacking formation. I think it boils down to being fitter in the mind when the team is winning (similar to what we saw when we thumped Huddersfield).

Also, we are too nice as a team. For their 2nd or 3rd try, Hargreaves was the 3rd man in the tackle and was being held by their player. Hargreaves pleaded his innocence with the ref and couldn't make it back to the line in time, leading to the gap that made the break. If he was more aggressive, he would have been swiping at the oppositions arm, forcing him to release.

For the tries the Cats scored, i don't think it was down to poor fitness, just bad decisions and soft tackling (leading to a quick play the ball).

The satellites for the GPS were down.

I don't quite know how to interpret that the Bulls are 30% fitter in 2012?
Are they now 100% fit or will they again be 30% fitter next season?
So how fit are they percentage wise now?

In the modern era of sports science i would have thought that it was impossible to increase a super leagues sides fitness by 30% in a season?

I suspect Potter is going to regret that statement, but must have got the figure from somewhere. are they doing 30% more stamina training, or cardiovascular training, or have they managed to increase their maximum heart rate level by 30%? whichever, as the above comment, does that mean they were unfit last season? At the end of the day its what we see on the pitch, and from the sound of it they do have a bit more endurance. To increase fitness by that amount would require really intense workouts, so is there another consequence of this 30%, that it has resulted in a lot of hamstring pulls etc that mean we are not seeing players on the pitch?

Maybe they where only 30% fit last season, now they are 60% fit down 3 NRL players comming in?

What a clown - I refer you all to my criticism of this mans performance and teams fitness levels last year, I'm not being clever either our weaknesses are so obvious, and as for our sports science genius this is a pretty indictment of what he's not been doing!

Its going to be a poor season guys and Potter's contract doesn't want renewing.......

I'm going until next year now, no point being on here stating the bleeding obvious all the time

But wouldn't that be 100% fitter than last season?

As someone said, most of Bradfdord's problems seem to be mental; whether that is lack of confidence or a lack of awareness of their & the oppositions game plan.

Good point. You could see the Catalan forwards run the ball in aggressively and in contact they dominated the collision, often enough to wrestle their arms free to get an offload or to make a quick play the ball. We seemed unable to do this anywhere near as well. In defence Catalans got three men into the tackle very often and slowed our PTB down so much our attack was nullified totally. When we tried this we got dominated in the collision and that led to us being caught around the ruck by Henderson.

IMO the cause for this is a lack of aggression, size and game awareness, and of course the fitness and endurance to keep up a decent level of intensity for 80mins. Most of those things we can address apart from the size and the aggression. Hopefully Manoakafoa and Elima will be back soon as we need some power up front. The likes of Hargreaves, Donaldson, Scruton and Sibbit are honest toilers but unless they're playing alongside some rough tough buggers they're going to get bullied.