Whilst I have never expected anything great from the Giants this season the current 'tosh' is also far from what I expected too.

No structure, no systems, no brains in fact no improvement just an error strewn penalty fest down to as always being dominated in the ruck and not having enough grunt in the pack.

Stone has added nothing, yes we've been a bit unlucky injury wise but in plain old fashioned talk we 'suck.'

Strangely enough in the first match against Widnes Ta'ai and Ikihihofo played 35 mins bashed Widnes's forwards and established a platform that won the game.

Not played that way since but if rumour is true Symonds and Mamo are getting somewhere near so let's get a plan together.

Forget winning at Saints on Friday it's a pipe dream let's try and get our best team as near as we can on the field for the Catalans game and concentrate on winning or at least playing better at home. Something to show a plan to get out of 'jail.'

If the team were showing any signs of structure or improvement at all I'd back Stone to the hilt but despite his constantly reminding us we are now in the 'long game' for getting better there are no small shoots or any signs that bit by bit we are improving and there's a solution out there.

Sad fact is we are getting worse not better.

After 17 matches in charge we should be seeing some of his ideas coming through cos if we have already had them then 'god help us.'

Sorry Rick you look like a man way out of his depth to me you are mirroring your team 'rabbits in headlights' surely one way or another it has to change or Ken needs to step in and change it because we are declining faster than when Anderson was here !!

Ive got to admit I know Saints aren't great this year but I don't see how we can win on Friday given that their defence is just so much better than ours - we have conceded double what they have. That should be enough to win them the game.

Lets face it - Brierley will be dropped for Brough so that rules out scoring any long range tries or getting something off any breaks - the only way we could score is barging over or trying to get in right in the corner if they are as bad as we are defending out wide.

We may be in the game up till half time or trailing by about 6-8 points but the game will finish 36 - 10

Looking at the missed tackles from last Friday,Gaskell 8,Mellor 9,Ferguson 5,don't think there can be any doubt if nothing else Broughy will stiffen up that left edge defence.

In fact 53 missed tackles throughout the whole team,if my maths are right.Makes grim reading.

Hinch should maybe take a bow 31 tackles,0 misses.

Interesting that Wakeman's metres per carry in this one 11/82 @ 7.45 were better than both Seb & Ukuma.

Hard to see how we can go from those overall grim stats onward to getting a win at St Helens.

As ever though live in hope.

I agree with so much of the opening post, I too was expecting very little this season by way of winning, what i was expecting was people starting to play as a team under RS, after all the mush about not wanting to go through what they did last year again, what we now have is a side heading straight back for more.

We all have our ideas about this or that, Brough's the weak link, Murphy is spent, X should be fullback, Y should be centre Whatever. It doesn't make that much difference who you play, when so many are of a standard. Man for man we are as good as a lot of other sides, As a team we are abysmal, I have watched the game for over 50 years now and although the game is much changed over the years, the one thing that hasn't changed is that ,When your pack is beaten 99 times out of a hundred your team is beaten, the only time that changes is when you have real game changers in your side and we don't have that.

You could have Murphy ,Millward, Hardesty whoever in the halves, if your pack is getting a hiding they will struggle to shine, At the moment we have a couple of forwards who are grafting, the rest have nice touches here and there, We have forwards who can tackle all day but as regards attacking they are clueless, we have forwards that are the opposite, As a unit they are very poor, the line speed is , one step forward, wait for the man to hit you and retreat with him for 10 yds. On attack hit the line and get pushed back 10 yards. No set of backs is going to do much behind a Soft pack, Why they don't have the stomach for it i don't know but until somebody finds out and changes it ,we are stuffed and it's starting to look like RS is not that man.

It may well be that Daz may have hit the nail right on the head when he said , The Board may not care over much about the Football side, as long as we manage to scrape along, the corporate side may be enough for them, Certainly they seem very short on ambition, But as was said in that debate, they are getting paid so just plod along.

The bottom line to all this is we are not a S league side in reality, On paper we should be, on the field we are Rubbish and as i have said over and over, people wont turn up to watch rubbish. The Giants answer to that is make it cheap rubbish.

I think my way forward might be to let all the players go who are out of contract this season, plus anymore we can offload. Make S Wane a offer he cant refuse, let him go to work on what we are left with, I think within 12 months anyone who didn't want to be playing for us would be gone, the ones who did would have a different attitude.

Sounds drastic but we need something drastic, To me we are heading for another long period in the wilderness, unless someone see's something i don't. If it's going to take as long as RS is indicating, there may not be anyone still interested by then, Just have to hope Mamo can work Miracles.

Got to also factor in stuff like confidence, when the players are playing well stuff comes off, players are not as cautious, a few of us were saying on Friday the players looked scared - not just of the opposition but of each other and themselves, scared of making mistakes which inevitably leads to more being made.

Saying that i cannot nor will try and defend some of the pathetic attempts at tackling i saw, science will tell you that if someone has 10-15 metres to run in they will pick up speed meaning they are going to be faster than you when you are stood still waiting for them and then have the speed and power to get past you when all you do to try and stop them is to try and grab a hold of their shirt, you will simply not stop anyone doing that,as it proves time and again.

Attack wise we're not too far off with the amount of points we are scoring, Cas apart most teams are around 100-150 points scored (we're on 124, there's 3 worse than us) but defensively we are terrible, surely every professional rugby league player knows how to tackle it's a basic of the game, so why are they not doing it? they know they HAVE to do it so i don't accept this is a coaching problem as players shouldn't need telling they have to tackle.

Why are we so soft in defence? that is our downfall in my eyes, sort that out and confidence will rise leading to players playing with less tension and hopefully an all round improvement in performance.

A lot of sense in that DAZ, the problem is what is going to change it, we waited all last season for things to change and they just never did, The strange thing is 3/4 games last year we played like a top of the league side then just went straight back to rubbish.
It's surprising how many people you talk to who say, They need relegating so they can start afresh, I'm inclined to that view myself. When you look where us and Leeds were last year and then look at Leeds now, while we are still bumping along.
As some body has said Hetherington told them straight, you have a month or face the consequences, There is a whole world of difference in the clubs and it's not just about them having more money. Warrington are poor at the moment, but you can put money on them doing whatever it takes to sort it, They wont just sit around wringing their hands and whinging about injuries

Remember Leeds are where they are now by NOT being relegated. That's the last thing we want as there is no guarantee you'll get back up to SL - unless people are saying they would be happy just to be a good championship club. Which I wouldn't.

There is plenty of time to get this fixed but only if someone fires a few rockets up a few arrises NOW.

Our defensive line speed has been shocking for a long long time - if you are not prepared to challenge the attack by getting in their faces you might as well pack it in now.

Injuries and confidence are no excuse for what we are seeing in defence. I can go to watch any of the age groups at Newsome and see more commitment.

I take your point but, We were also not relegated and despite a lot of talk about not wanting it again, we are as bad if not worse.

I don't particularly want to see us relegated, I just see the viewpoint that it may be the only way for us to get rid of all the dead wood, Problem with that is that we would just go and buy in more of the same, if history is anything to go by.

The alternative at the moment seems to be just to make the numbers up in S league. I agree with you about our line speed and also the effort put in when we finally trundle up there, but there is a hell of a lot more wrong than that and at the moment like most people i just don't see what is going to change anything. R S has not had long that's true, but do you see any signs that things are going to change. I live in hope of course.

Just as a matter of interest , Who do you see as being the person to fire these few rockets, I don't think there's a person in the club who's capable, I think if there had been he would have fired some last season rather that loading Championship players in the side.

if relegated Wouldn't we just be left with dead wood whilst any promising green shoots would be off elsewhere?
The only reason (most) players come to play for us is we offer them more money than anyone else.

jools thats the problem . we are paying very average players as if they are full internationals to do well in this game you need a good C E O who can get the most out of the cap

And a coach who can get the most out of the players, We have neither it seems, So who is going to make any change.

The buck ultimately stops with Ken Davy. He needs to do a 'Gary Hetherington'.

Agree completely.

Either that or the players need to 'do a Hull'.

I think DAZ, as TBC has suggested a bit of encouragement is needed to bring that about.