Quote: sally cinnamon "Early reasons for pessimismNot 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.'"
Great post Sally...can't argue with any of that mate. I think your right about Clarke...he needs to impose himself much more as a key pivot and decision maker...he should be calling the shots..along with Brown, Roberts and Ratchford.