We are still carrying far too many, Hughes,Brown and Russell are weak links.
I'm shocked that Westwood was given a new contract.

To be fair to Westwood (and I criticised the decision to re-contract) was one of the better players as has been stated on another thread Leeds failed to score in his presence.

The lack of creativity, teamwork and kicking game in the halves is more of a concern than anything else

Obviously not but info rather than a condescending reply would have positive posts from both of us.

I couldn't see that from where I stood and thought it puzzling to take a player off 5 mins off ft.

I wish him a speedy recovery.

If Brown & Ratchford were as good as your punctuation & grammar we'd win the Super league by a country mile.

Early reasons for pessimism:

Our attack wasn't much to shout about. Looks like we will make hard work of scoring tries.

Also basically there are four big questions I have about this team:

1. Not enough depth of quality in the pack. It's the weakest pack we have fielded since the early 2000s; possibly further back. As the concern when Hill went off shows, we are only one or two injuries away from having a real problem here.

2. No real pace or spark in the back line. This isn't new, and even in the peak TS years, after Hicks went we lacked express pace. But we had good finishers and players who were good at scoring from high kicks, which brings me to...

3. Mediocre kicking game. We took for granted that for 16 years when Briers was here, whatever other problems the team had, we always had one of the best kicking games in SL. It's been up and down since but generally poor.

4. Lack of leadership and poor decision making. Highlighted painfully in the final set of six and with individual poor decisions eg Atkins plus Ratchford's continuing tendency to be casual and make errors. I think the best hope of sorting this out is Daryl Clark, he seems the right kind of character and knows what he is doing. He needs to become for us what Michael Monaghan used to be.

I don't think the current team lacks in willingness or workrate, but it's a limited squad and it needs at least 4 top quality additions to start thinking about challenging for trophies. 6th place would be a reasonable aim.

Looking forward though, we have a big task on our hands in terms of recruitment over the next 2 to 3 years if we are going to get back to the levels of a few years ago. This off season we didn't bring in enough quality to address our problems.

I’m absolutely gutted we didn’t get Barba, he looked total class tonight for that lot

3 new players.

I've said before.....the Warrington board were sure he was to be a Wire, something going wrong after a final chat with TS again? An all expenses trip paid for him at the Magic weekend and Barba spent it by taking the P out of SJM.

Interesting that 2 Wire rejects tormented us last night ... Myler & Dwyer, moved on by the club for not being good enough.

Yes, but in the case of Myler, he definitely [iwas not[/i good enough. I don't think he looked all that impressive for Catalans either. Either he has miraculously finally found his feet (in every sense of the word) or last night was one of the ones he gave to us occasionally - a top class performance - and he'll revert for the majority of the season. Dwyer, however, is a bit loss. I was always a fan and his situation was clearly not managed well by the previous management.

Going back over the last few posts.

I think sally cinnamon nails it, with his 4 bullet points.

Barba, despite him looking like a good/great player, looks like Sandow Mk II. There'll be tears before bedtime. Mark my words.

Myler. Still missed by me. Not the greatest player by any means, but has that "X-factor" about him, in the same way Maguire and Long did.

Dwyer, he's OK. Shows potential, but I'm not losing sleep over his leaving.



Back on thread. There seems to have been a malaise about our club, since our last Wembley win. Get to the top table, but seem to be complacent, ever since. Gatcliffe left. Just happy to be chugging along with Leeds, Saints and Wigan, but not moving on to the next level.
Spending big transfer fees on Brown, Lineham and the other fella from Hull (genuinely forgotten his name) was to me, an ego trip...... simply because we could. Lineham's try scoring return aside, I'm still shaking my head over all 3 of them.

Poor recruitment / retention of players. Buying jack of all trades players. Smith staying those couple of seasons too long, AND bringing his mate Agar in. The fall out with senior pro's and the fitness coach from a few years back. Getting an ex RL pro to go and sit a few business exams at the local tech college, stick a tie on him, and class him as your COO, shouts smalltime, to me.

Something's not right. If we don't fix it, we'll be coasting back to mid table mediocrity, where we were 20 years ago.

I'm not TOO pessimistic, though. Anything is possible in SL, now. We've the poorest standard competition since it's inception. Anyone can beat anyone. Yes, that makes for sustained interest, but it's only because of lack of quality. It's like having a bad weight division in boxing. Bang average world title fights, but having the same boxers keeping hold of their belts.

As JJ Burnelll once sung.....Something Better Change