Quote: Last Son of Wigan "Still not fully convinced.
I don't know why people are saying AL inherited a mess, he didn't, he inherited a championship winning side with 3 key players departing who were all replaced with quality. are the departures better than the arrivals debatable, without a doubt Bateman is a loss, but teams loss quality consistently at the end of each season; difference is Lam inherited a team capable of winning the GF.
I don't see how the Edwards situation was of any impact apart from paper talk and the embarrassment the club faced a coaching U turn. I could never cite that alone as a reason for such poor play.
Throughout this season we've been very inconsistent. We were sloppy and losing early on, now we're still sloppy yet finding enough to beat poorer teams. I still think we've only had 1 complete performance over 80 mins this season, even the win v Wire a few weeks back showed a second half were our team made less meters, conceded more pens, had less percentage of the play and were out-scored.
Take the weekend just gone... that wasn't a strong performance at all. Was penaltzxy filled opening in a back and forth game without either team looking impressive. Some good some great individual moments (Marshall for example) but hardly a great team performance.
But... we are winning. We're second in the table. We're looking stronger in D and we still have key players missing. We're in a very good position to really make a good run at the GF, and hopefully really make a mark and defend our title with real fight.
6 out of 10 so far for the season over all.
I also will say this, for those out there who regularly watch the NRL will understand how poor the standards in SL have gotten. I don't think it's Saints who are a particularly outstanding RL team, I think the overall standard of RL is very low.
NRL looks way faster, the players look fitter, run harder, ball movement is slick and precise, over here there's a lot of players who simply aren't good enough.'"
Agree with virtually all of that.
From the low of Barcelona we have improved and for that I'm very grateful but we are still way short of being a very good team.
The present squad struggles to make good yards on a consistent basis and when we eventually play Saints in the playoffs this will come home to bite.
Next season will be very interesting and if Lam can improve our 6th tackle options and our kicking game then we may see how good Lam actually is.
I for one didn't expect too much this season so making the playoffs is a genuine bonus for me after our awful start.