Good to see Wires71 dusting off the keyboard after a few defeats.

We were very poor yesterday and I was worried for the first time. We did, however, come up against a terrific team who have been building their entire season so far up that game - if you don't believe me, check the pages of l'Independant or the Catalans official media/website. They got a massive crowd in and played some sublime rugby - I would have Dureau like a shot to be honest.

Our defence is a concern; we look weak in the tackle and some senior players aren't working hard enough. I'm afraid our captain is one of them, not sure whether it's through age, fatigue or lack of fitness, but you can't just swing the arm every time. At the moment a big man running onto the ball close to our line always looks likely to score - that's a big problem and I'm not sure what the answer is.

Waterhouse seems to be suffering from something a Pygmalion effect - the more he gets stick for not playing well, the worse he seems to get. I actually thought he was great for the first 7 or 8 games, but the last few he has given penalties away for fun and made poor defensive reads.

Higham is still the only player offering direction and keeping the forwards moving. They don't half need it though: our props can't be worrying Keighley at the moment.

Am I the only one who though that Catalan were far from convincing yesterday? Some of their play at times was worse than ours. I think for the first time this season, maybe first half against Saints too, I have been as frustrated as I can remember in a long, long time.

The lads who were given the luxury of a night off against Widnes were probably some of our worse players yesterday, and that is a genuine concern. They just look totally shattered sometimes and I can't get my head around it. Although I don't want to single anybody out at all either. Collectively we are just not performing to the standard we know we can. If our discipline and defensive attitude was better yesterday I've no doubt we'd have got the result.

For what it's worth I think Higham is carrying us at times, Benny and Hill too. Dwyer looks a real talent so there are some positives. But a lot of the time this season we look as though we've just woken up from a bad trip or something. There are things in our game that need addressing quickly.

if you ask me some of these players look like they're not getting a good nights sleep. It's not a good advert for Bensons for beds.

I agree with most of the comments on this thread(some are tripe) - I just hope we are going to do a Leeds come the 2nd half of the season!!

We are in a better position than they were at this time last year and look how they finished - we were the opposite - great first half of season and finished after the cup.

I just think it will come together(maybe a fresh face brought in, if poss ) - then we can DELETE all these posts

Tony Smith is a great coach, and knows it will come good

Our fitness looks lacking...might be down to the fixture list...lots of big away games has taken its toll on us.

It's all in Tony's plan. We didn't get back from Australia having been worked liked dogs the week before the first game just by coincidence. We are running at half capacity at the moment, there is an air about the club that these games dont seem important. Most games we have played as if they are pre-season friendlies.
I think we are actually playing with too much confidence at the moment. The mind has the ideas but most the time it just isn't clicking. We should keep on playing with the same tactics so that when the tired legs start to catch up with the mentality we will blow teams away again, this year it will be when it matters more.

I'm not worrying too much at the moment. We have a comparable points total to last year. We have only lost to teams who would have been considered "tough" at the start of the season. There's still a long way to go. I agree though that we shall see whether the remainder of the year shows TS to be as good a coach as people think when the chips are down.

The only thing I do find a little disappointing is the constant retoric coming out of "we know we are making mitskaes, we know we have to cut the errors, we know we have to go back to basic". Fair enough......but when they going to start doing it. (Even the captain of the Titanic knew what he "should" have done!)

With respect, we are in a better position than we were in this time last year in terms of points on the board. Also, I'm not sure why last year's first half of the season was so great - the second half was better, given that we won all our last ten matches, and in fact only lost one from rounds 13-27. Neither were we finished after the cup - won all games after being knocked out by Wigan, except for the narrow defeat to Leeds in the play-off semis.

There is of course no reason why this season will run along similar lines, but if we're going to compare last year to this, then we are at present doing as well as at the same stage last season, without having played particularly well yet.

For me it all comes down to getting the basics right.

Anyone who has ever played sports at any level will have heard a coach or manager say "crawl before you can walk".

Last season when everything was going great we were offloading for fun and breaking teams down at will.
We played expansive rugby and when we made errors, we had a strong defence to stop teams from capitalising.

This season we haven't just become a bad team overnight. We just find ourselves in a position were teams know our tactics that little bit better and have their own tactics to counteract them. So when the expansive rugby isn't working and the offloading isn't coming off what do you do?
You go back to basic rugby league and complete your sets and rely on a good kicking game to get good field position.

For a few weeks we looked like we were full of errors and things weren't coming off, however we kept getting the results on the back of a very good defence. The best example of this was the Wigan game. We were totally outplayed against Wigan, but our defence stood up strong and we just sneaked the result.

Against Saints we were finally punished for our mistakes and we just fell apart!!!
Instead of having a plan B to go back to basic rugby league and hang on to the ball and complete our sets etc, we panicked and kept trying to offload in impossible situations. The best example being the ridiculous offload by Carvell with seconds remaining in the half when we had just scored a try to give us hope.
In the second half however when we started completing sets we suddenly became competitive and matched Saints blow for blow. The only problem was that we were behind so eventually had to start throwing it about again to try and create something.

Against Widnes we played much more conservatively but we still made too many errors and fell behind early. Fortunately we were playing a poor team and we eventually came out on top but never ever really looked as convincing as we did last year.
Once the Widnes game was out of sight, we should have then started attempting the offloads because it is when you are winning and the pressure is off that they seem to come off for you. That would surely have raised the confidence.

Yesterday against Catalans we were full of errors and penalties again and we allowed them to constantly play from within our half and our defence wasn't up to it.
Again the basics just seemed to be missing. These players know what is a penalty and what isn't yet they seem to give away silly penalties at ridiculous times.
Having said that though, yesterday was one of them games in which it could have gone the other way if we just had the basics going for us. Riley losing concentration and dropping the ball in corner. Bridge forcing the pass to Monaghan when we were away for a definite try. Catalan scored off the back off that error to go 10 points up at half time, were if we got our basics right it would have been us level or up by 2 at half time.

I think Smith needs to work on the basics with the team.
The skill factor is there amongst the backs and they will cause damage provided we have the field position and we aren't constantly trying to come from behind.
Start the game conservatively and concentrate of catching the ball and holding on to it and completing our sets with good field position and hunt out the mistakes from our opponents.
Once we get these basics right the flair rugby that we are so good at will come naturally instead of trying to force it.

Having said all that, I don't believe that there is any need to panic as our next few games are very winnable and sport is very much a confidence game. 4 or 5 wins on the bounce and you'll see a very different Warrington team.

Add to that the return of players like Harrison who we have missed more than we realised we would and Solomona who will bring back our offload game, and we will soon be back at the top of the pile.

The most important thing at the moment for the fans though is to back the team more than ever.
It is easy to be the extra man when things are going well, but they are the times when we aren't really needed. It is when things aren't quite right that the team need that push of support from the fans, but unfortunately is sometimes at these points that the fans start booing and walking away.
Now is a true test of the Warrington fans that we claim are the best in Super League, well now is the time to show it.

The REAL M Monas...a big piece of last years puzzle that has yet to really feature this year IMO.

Christ. Things must be bad.

Sorry I was talking about the start leeds made, compared to the wire this year

Fair do's with the stats - I can't argue with you there
I just wonder who was 'giving there all' for which comp at the back end of the season

I thought we lost the edge - but maybe all the other teams stepped up and brought us back down to earth

I still remember the awesome stuff we played, and what hopefully, is to come this year

And the 2 recent wembley visits

Well they always say its harder to retain a title than to win it in the first place - we managed to do it when we won the Challenge Cup but the question is do the players have the hunger to chase back to back Championships like they did back to back Challenge Cups.

The problem is if we carry on like this we might end up having nothing to play for apart from the end of season playoff competition.