Stone was not the issue and never was its those out on the field!!

There will be plenty who agree with this, or at least won't disagree. Myself i have always thought a good coach will be able to get even ordinary players playing to their best, I have often sited Murphy and Brown in this respect, but i agree that the players have to want to do it.

There has been a pattern at Fartown for quite some time of players coming to us with good reputations and doing nothing at all, When they get moved on to other clubs many of them become good players once again, On the other side of that coin we have players like "Murphy for example" who never stops trying and get slated by some on here as letting us down .or not being good enough.

Others players have a couple of good games and they are talked of being legends and need signing for long contracts, a few months later they are mediocre, many we have let go as not being good enough only for them to become good players elsewhere and that just makes you think the coaching is to blame , but then we have had so many coaches, have they all been poor except for Murphy and Brown ?.
Anyway we are now bottom of the table, a position we got well used to a few seasons ago, only this time we will not be allowed to sit there season after season because there is no-one to take our place and we shall just have to live with the consequences " should it happen ".

We are certainly not 'too good to go down' even with our first choice team we lack creativity and have ageing/nowhere near good enough halfbacks. If things dont change i see us not even making the million pound game, we are the worst team in the competition by some distance with the team we have on the field at the moment. The players coming back will improve us for sure, but not in the key halfback area. We are in real trouble, make no mistake.

Oh i thoroughly agree, I am in no doubt about how difficult the middle 8 comp will be. Our main hope is for our players to be a lot fitter by then than they are now, and there are those who say forget about this league, we need to be thinking and preparing for those playoff's now.

I also agree with you about halfbacks, Brough has been one of the best buys at the club for many a long year, and has won us many a game almost on his own, However he has been whoefully short of a partner for much of that time which has resulted in everything going through him, and he may be as much to blame for that as anybody.

The answer though is not to keep signing players who have no track record ( at least Brough was a proven winner ) even if he is now well past his best, but hey ho in the affairs of the Giants we are in the wishing and hoping category and lets hope some of that comes about by the time we are in the fight for survival.

By the way I feel very sorry for Thurman a thoroughly decent bloke and a good player who has entered a huge storm not of his own making and is now becoming the fall guy for some fans and the club management who set him up.

With a new baby as well. He must be knackered!