Madge may not be a happy bunny, but can he really blame the players? The RFL have slipped an "international" grade game into the fixtures which puts a bias against the best of the UK teams.

i do wonder if the delay in announcing any sort of status or signing for the manger next year is hurting us, many teams throughout this second half of the season will be looking at players, signing them up (after the September deadline) and our team do not know who they are going to eb working under, and if we take the reports from australia that there have been many signings for souths and madge is involved, you have to seriously ask the question, would this be effecting the players, would they be bothered about not knowing, there are many key players at massive decision points in their careers, it just might all add up to a frustrating time off the field, prehaps not all the time but i know from experience, having going through a similar sort of deal within a large company it can be frustrating and these fusrations unfortunatly make its way into your work and into your working relationships.

We are a work in progress !

Rivington this morning?

After backing up following the Exiles game..its perhaps not the time to start throwing the toys out of the pram. However what is worrying is the consist lack of penetration we are getting in attack especially on the opposition line.

Our two pivots (Deacs and Finch) are carbon copies of each other...they both stand deep and NEVER take the line on. The opposition know they are gonna pass every time and simply spot the players in position to recieve the pass up..and NAIL THEM.

We need more from the halves, they are not a good combination at this pont in time. Its getting to the point where we have to question persevering with this combination...because its just not delivering.

We have three options...

Put Tommy back at 7 with Deacs at 6 (never thought I'd say that)
Bring Sam from full back into the halves (Madge will never do this) - he'd then have ball in hand on 3-4 palys out of each set (better use of his talents)
Bring Mellor in - a huge gamble

We just cant carry on as we are - either Finch improves or he's dropped.

out of those options id go for the sam one everytime, but im thinking that we will never see sam bk in the halves

The problem then is getting an attacking fullback. It's so important to have that in a team these days and beyond Sam there's no other at the club, bar Roberts.

Correct - Amos did nothing worng yesterday..we need to give him a run.

We cant afford the luxury of the best player in the league at full back when our halves are playing poop.

Time for action

It needs to be looked at in context.

Wigan, Wire and Sai*ts contributed 20 of the 34 Origin players, and scored 0 second half tries between them.

Indeed. Is it really surprising those teams underperformed less than 48 hours later?

True, but I think more of them should have been rested. With all the technology available to the conditioning team now, they should have been able to assess that Lockers & McIlorum, and possibly Pat, weren't fit to play for long spells.

It's about time Finch was benched - he just hasn't gelled into the team and we look all the worse for it...

finch is a massive liability at the moment,
if you watch him in when he is running back to his position in a defensive line he always turns his back to the players, most of the breaks come from down his side, between him and hoffman or him n carmont, and as those two players are outstanding it suggests that he may be the weak link.