Have to disagree. Hudds were shaping up to be a decent team before he got there IMO.Came in at the right time and they have real quality players who can change a game on their own.
However the players do seem to know what their jobs are and play with a good structure which asks questions of the opposite defenses. They roll the dice and get their fair share of luck. Sadly we have no one capable of rolling the dice..

I thought there were some positives. Low error count, plenty of local youngsters not out of place at this level. Smith looked good when he came on. Negatives? Lack of aggression in terms of chasing our kicks, closing down their kicker, defensive line speed, hitting the ball at pace (come on LMS and TC!). Im not too dis-heartened by the perfomance. Luke Williamson is a podgy waste of space. NL2 quality. Get rid.

With so many injuries, it puzzles me why the club don't look for some good loan players with experience to fill a short term need until our regular players are fit. Look at how well Ainscough did for Cas, who is out on loan! My concern is that the club appear to be focused on the long term in terms of young player development, and are effectively saying that we should write off the next few seasons until that development has taken place.

The comments about Brian McDermott are interesting. On the one hand you could look at what Brown at Hudds has done since taking over from Sharp (an experienced SL coach), and in particular Maguire at Wigan who took over from a very experienced coach, but appears to have taken them to another level. The club has a choice to make - you can either be honest, or talk the club up to the media. Which would you prefer?

However ultimately, it is about money, and until someone comes along to assist David financially, the downward spiral will continue. All the promising players developed will simply be poached by other clubs, and we will never realise our potential as a club. I for one am tired of the patronising and "damned by faint praise" we are constantly hearing - plucky, brave, never give in etc. I would prefer respect.

We need someone who is prepared to help DH out financially and bring in some quality players to make us competitive. Even with the players injured back in the team the quality isnt there to turn us into a team to threaten the rest. I am disappointed with Ian Lenaghan. He should just hand over his share to DH IMO who could then find a buyer himself.
The shares cant be worth much and IL doesnt seem bothered about finding a replacement. Too involved with Wigan to give his time up to sort our future out.

Relatively it isnt that expensive to run a moderately succesful SL club. What we need is someone running the club on a day to day basis who has a vision and is very demanding of his staff. Read the article about Hetherington in this months RL World if you want to see how its done. Its not all about having a sugar daddy. Far from it.

I wonder if hes up for another challenge then nows he turned Leeds in to what they are and come down here and give us a hand.

At least the Hull stewards were kind enough to be giving out free tickets to anybody who wanted them before the match.

The underlying problems haven't really changed from last season because we haven't really addressed them.

1) We lack a quality scrumhalf with a kicking game, Orr is the only player who can organise, but he's more naturally suited to a stand off role than scrum half. Also, whilst Orr's attacking kicking is okay (hence tries for Howell last season and Sharp this season) he doesn't give us great positioning or distance in general play, and nor do any other players e.g. Randall. This hurts because we don't gain easy yards from penalties like our opponents, we never get 40/20's and generally we don't make it as hard as we should for our opponents to return our kicks. Purdo might help a little when he comes back, but Gale and Dorn are unlikely to make any difference.

2) Our pack is underpowered, people say LMS has gone backwards, that might be true, but he plays in a lightweight pack with a lack of go forward. It was good to see Karl back, bad to see him go again, but that he's our best prop only reminds us how little size and depth we have. Of the props I don't see Ben Jones, Danny Ward or Matt James offering us much, I don't think Olly Wilkes is anything but a stop gap.

3) We appear to be signing players to make up the numbers in our reserves and players who aren't good enough to play for teams we should be aiming to be above, a few seasons ago BM was slating clubs who get stuck at the bottom of the ladder because they trade e players with each other, now we take players who aren't even good enough for that. I think the only club with a weaker squad than us is Salford, I think we'll be 13th this season.

We need a coaching clear out and a player clear out, half our squad either simply aren't good enough for this level or are average.

I accept most of kelvin's post, but I would say that if we were going to have a clear out, it would have been at the end of last season after a 10 game losing run and a 48-0 thrashing by Cas in a vital game. Major surgery was needed to arrest the alarming lack of confidence (which is what Bradford and Hull have done). It hasn't happened, all we did was to lose 4 experienced players (Heckenberg, Gafa, Robinson and Haggerty) and replace them with youngsters - which is why I pointed to a long term benefit perhaps if we could keep them when they mature.

There is clearly not the resources to compete for honours, so all we have to be thankful for is that there is a Super league club at all in London. Surely the RFL could be more pro-active in seeking investors.

While this is true, is the situation that different than we have experienced at other times ? Perhaps Tony Rea, for example, did a better job of managing his limited resources.

RQ is spot on as most supporters stated towards the back end of last season, if nothing major was going to change with the coaching/playing staff close season, how were we going to perform any differently in 2010.

As to the point on managing resources, I truly cannot believe that our squad costs have increased year on year since 2005, and the income from gates/additionals hasn't greatly altered p or down?] either, so what is different?

Are we now paying rent and that is eating a chunk of our money that in the past was used on the squad?

Has the quota reduction meant we now no longer kind find the Scott Crams etc from Australia and instead have to make do with cast off players willing to come to London as they would not get a SL game anywhere else?

Changing the coach at this point of the season is madness other than the fact that perhaps a change there would alter the mind sets of the players we have, but it's almost the last throw of the dice to do so.

Wigan dont have exclusive rights to a ground but seem to progress-They played a home 1/4 final at Widnes last year.

That's....................................depressing then.

Makes you wonder then what is different now to our last stint at the Stoop if all we are is paying tenants again....we could not afford to continue to stay there at that time..................so much for a partnership.