more than they would in the championship. Which is why they are doing what they are doing. There might be some romance that some attach to going down swinging, but sometimes the pragmatic thing is to take a knee and fight the battle you can win.

Ill tell you one thing, Wakefield will go in to next year far more positive, with far more money, and far more season ticket sales if they lose the next 13 but they finish the season with 5 wins from 7, than they would going down having finished the first 23 rounds in 9th.

The only thing that matters to Wakefield this year is that they stay up, they are far more likely to do that by being better than 4 championship clubs than they are 4 SL clubs.

Whilst I think that Wakefield and in particular Webster have got this one badly wrong, clubs can only work to the system (2 x 12 & 3 x that has been put in place.

I actually posed a question of James Webster at the fans forum just before the season started, as to how he intended managing his squad as there was a strong possibility of us finishing in the "middle 8".
The reply given was, that they would re asses where the team were at regular intervals.

I guess that the number of injuries sustained early on, especially in the forwards, has made it extremely difficult to compete and realistically, even at such an early stage of the season, Wakefield look nailed on for the "middle eight".

Where Webster and M. Carter have got things badly wrong, is that people will not turn up to watch a team going through the motions and quite frankly, if this is what we have, I would rather that we were playing Championship rugby, although IF Wakefield do get relegated, they may never return to SL.

There are major issues with the ground, falling attendances and of course, cash is tight.

It's a very sorry situation but, the one certainty is that if there was 1 up, 1 down, based on final league position, the white flag would not have been raised yet !

If Wakefield's current predicament is partly down to Webster placing greater emphasis on Wakefield's final standing than the here-and-now then you can really only judge him at the end of the season - against his own goals.

I'm not saying I like "gaming the competition" - but haven't Rugby League fans been crying out of "more intelligent coaching" for years?

Granted, the two teams aren't comparable in terms of quality players - but I remember Nathan Brown being repeatedly slaughtered for some of Saints' performances around the mid-point of last season. At the time those criticisms seemed reasonable to many. But looking back now it was obvious that Brown had targeted early points which would allow him to take the foot off the accelerator somewhat mid-season and experiment with new tactics so come the arrival of the playoffs the team would be fully conditioned and tactically ready (injuries allowing). I don't want to get into whether Brown was a better coach than Millward or Anderson. But I will say he more than any Saints coach I've witnessed never saw individual games as anything other than a [imeans to an end[/i. A chess move set against the context of the entirety of the game.

This is why I'm very much against getting rid of coaches mid-season in the professional era unless it is absolutely essential.

You mean something similar to this scoreline??? Leeds 4 Wigan 74 the main fault was the Leeds players, no moral fibre or backbone
And whilst we're at it just in the SL era
Bradford 96 Salford 16
St.Helens 75 Wigan 0
St.Helens 18 Wigan 68
Warrington 0. St.Helens 80
the list goes on, you just have no idea do you..
And just for the London fans
London 68 Warrington 18, at a time when Warrington were flying high bunch of non tryers