Steve Price

In the regular season things are never as good as you think when you’re in winning form (see our 2011 season, Saints last year or maybe this year), and are never as bad as you think when you’re in losing form.

Also never make your opinions based on small runs of games and especially not from individual games. They can be anomalies or inconsistencies.

Price has been here just 18 months and has made some good and some bad signings. He’s still working with a lot of players from Smith’s tenure who I didn’t think were performing in that last season with Smith or I would get rid of (maybe he will).

Ratchford Hughes Clark King Philbin and Lineham are all better players under Price than they were under Smith. Hill and Currie have gone the other way but that’s more to do with age and injury. And he’s brought in Charnley Austin Burrell and Widdop who long term could be great signings. While there have been some naff ones too.

We had a leaky defence in 2017 and he sorted that out. When we’re on it we have a mean defence.

He isn’t particularly giving youth players much of a chance, but are they even good enough? He’s let Livett go out on loan, but he was quite poor for us at times last season. We play a fairly boring style of rugby, but it got us to two finals in a season where I think we overachieved last year (I thought we were a 3rd/4th league placed, semi final level team yet we finished 2nd and got to both finals).

It’d be the end of next season before I start to say Price needs replacing, not if we win nowt this season!

We aren’t the best team in the country, we don’t have the best pack, the best back line, or the most creativity so why do people think we should be winning things? Saints had a better side than us last season and beat us to the LLS, Catalans had a better pack than us in the CC final last season and beat us, Wigan had more creativity across the pitch in last year’s GF and beat us.

For me it’s the same this year. Saints are better than us and are leading the way for the LLS, we pay Hull in the CC semi soon and they have a better back line than we do and more creativity, we may play them or Catalans come the Play-offs and Catalans have a better pack than we do. If we lose to these teams in the league, Cup and Play-offs this season then so be it. We aren’t a particularly good side despite having some good players.

I think we are performing overall about at the level we are. We are about a 2nd/3rd placed league team and a semi/final team. We’re on course for those things this season. We are going to be inconsistent with some of the players we have or injuries and lack of depth we have or lack of quality youth.

We can turn it on at times. Until we went down to 12 men in both games against St Helens, we were easily a match for them. But then we can have these terrible performances too. But it’s about turning it on in just four or five games all year in reality: CC semi, CC final, Play-off R1, Play-off semi, Grand Final. Anything before that is just doing enough to get into those games.

I think Price is doing a decent job. There is plenty of room for improvement. But let’s see where we are come the Winter eh?!