It's a sad state of affairs then that a coach has to begin to teach full time players how to run pass and tackle

Seriously he should resign for his own sanity, I wouldn't want to coach any player who wasn't trying but taking money under full pretences.

People can accept players being beat providing the effort and commitment is obvious. It wasn't even a twinkle in the Wildcats players eyes

Admittedly, an eighty point thrashing doesn't sound particularly great. But listening to many in this thread you'd swear they haven't scored a point all season.

Given Wakey's squad and the injuries they've piled up I'd say they are pretty much where I'd expect.

All this talk about "resigning without pay" is complete tosh. In this league it's entirely possible for Wakefield to pick up two or three wins on the bounce (provided they get some players back). Which means they are back in the hunt.

I mean, it wasn't all that long ago they could have pulled off a great win against Saints.

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.

Who are all these injured players? Looking at the 17 that played this week, didn't seem to be full of kids that have never played before?

Yes, staying up is the most important thing. But would be asking a lot of a team that have lost 13+ games on the trot to suddenly win 5 out of 7. Don't doubt the logic for saying they want to save themselves for play offs, but will need some careful managing.

Yeah but they don't need to give up on all 13 games. Right now it doesn't really matter, but this is just an extended pre-season for them.

Look at the criticism of Wakefield from a performance aspect, conditioning and injuries. Its not coincidence Wakefield have injuries. A strain wont be risked in case it turns in to a tear, a bang gets rested. I would bet a pound to a penny that a fair amount of Wakefields injured players would be playing if we were the middle 8 phase.

Similarly conditioning. Its no coincidence Wakefield lack conditioning. They don't want to be peaking right now, they need to be building up their fitness and conditioning for a few months time. And they are able to do that. The start of this season they beat Cas and Hull KR, pushed Salford and Saints. Two of their first 4 games in the super 8s are likely to be against the 3rd and 4th best teams in the championship at home, games you would expect them to win even now, the other two will be away at teams 9 and 10 from SL, they pinch a result there and they are 1 win away from at the very least being the home side in the million pound game that isn't for a million pound.

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 103848.stm news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 917753.stm

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 103848.stm news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 917753.stm

Bang on this ^^.

With WTW now playing "friendlies" for the next 13 games the concept of "every minute matters" certainly hasn't worked out the way the RFL expected. Other teams will fall into friendly mode over the next 6 to 8 weeks but I don't think anyone expected someone to do it this early in the season.

At what point do the RFL look at the new system been flawed ? Could they bring WTW to task of not playing their part in the concept ?

Don't believe Wakey are deliberately conditioning their players for the last 8 of the season. That's how injuries happen. Martin Clawson used to be the conditioner at the Bulls, he's just simply an awful conditioner. Wakey won't be any fitter or stronger come the split than they are now.

For me it's a massive gamble what Websters doing. He can really make the fans become disillusioned with the club. Last year after we got humiliated by Leeds & Wigan at Easter, our coach said that games against Leeds and Wigan weren't going to decide our season. We then played Salford who at the time were the directly above us in the table. The game was over in 20 minutes. Confidence and moods of the club/fans are massive. Wakey lose the fans with getting tonked every week, they will struggle.

You can't guarantee you have a fit and healthy squad either. Look at Carney's injury. One tackle and a season could be over for a player.

When all the squads are fit and healthy, i would have Wakey as a better team than Bradford and Leigh on paper. But i would also have Warrington as a better team than Cas, St Helens a better team than Hull KR, Wigan a better team than Widnes. None of them results went the way we expected. Beauty of sport is, it's not played on paper. If we knew what was going to happen in sports matches, we could all make a living off the bookies.

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