I wonder sometimes if the other board has one person posting negative stuff under multiple usernames because there can’t be that many people all in one place who genuinely seem to dislike the club, the players and thrive on any negative results. A couple of yesterday’s beauties were one person saying Byrne should no more than a kicking tee carrier (I’m sure he’s had a good start to the season) and criticism for Farrell and Bateman (literally the least of our worries and possibly our two best players).

It’s been a positive start overall but we’ve still got plenty of work to do and that’s in areas on and off the field. I just hope there’s a real sense of that being the case because whilst I’m comfortable with where we are right now, we’ve got huge strides we need to make to get back challenging Saints for trophies and to get the whole club feeling and looking strong.

There’s some off the field things that also need a lot of attention that have been allowed to fall away-coverage of the academy, reserves, women’s teams, marketing to get people back through the gates rather than just going down the lazy route of charging die hards more (Cas fans rightfully fuming at having to pay £30 to watch a TV game on a Thursday night live) and so on. There’s been some positive strides forward in off the field areas but there’s work to be done there as well.

Some fans perhaps need to realise that 'we played terrible' and 'we are terrible' are two different things. We dropped the ball too much. Deal with it and move onto the next one.

Definitely. I’m really excited about what is to come this season. A team with French and Field in it won’t be boring and I think Havard could be our biggest improver under this new coaching set up, so I’m pretty positive. The weather looks good on Thursday as well, so that won’t hurt

I don't want to get into arguments about t'other site; like NK and others, I post on both. But I am heartened by the pragmatic response here generally. We've had a couple of poor games in France, we need to learn from it and move on. I do think comments like "they shouldn't have stayed in France for a jolly" are pretty ridiculous. do people really imagine that's how it was? I would have thought the reverse was more likely, that the players wanted to get back home.

As for criticism of Faz and JB, to be fair, Faz in particular has been well below par the last few weeks, missing tackles, dropping the ball. We all love him, but truth to tell he's not been good lately.

But hey. it's not like we don't have second-rowers aplenty!

I don't think the stay over in France was particularly a 'jolly' but if you look at the pictures on the training gallery over there, there is a lot of smiling and laughing faces on the pics, now it could just be unfortunate that the pics just happened to be taken at a particular instant and it may have been really intense, but that coupled with the reports of sight seeing trips and downtime (which I appreciate they have when at home) I wonder if they became complacement in their preperation to the game, when at home most players I suspect would be focussing their attention on the upcoming game and not out on a tour bus.

I think most players had an 'off day' that and the weather conditions turned into us never being able to get a foot hold on the game and once you feel like everything is against you it is hard to get back to a game plan.

Would you rather the club uploads images where they look unhappy, not gelling as a team, on phone to wives/girlfriends missing them, on facetime to new born babies etc?

Sight seeing trips and down-time? Do they have down-time at home? Yes. What is the big deal.

The club have travelled to Catalans enough to make an assessment that to stay out there for the duration was probably better than all of the travelling and disruption.

Like I said it could be just poor timing of the camera shutter but what I want to see in a training session is focus and intent in a players face when running plays etc. not somebody taking a ball in and laughing with his mate in the background laughing with him.

I did says players have down time when at home, but there is a difference, downtime at home will be time spent with family, also preparing themselves mentally for the game at the weekend, time to focus on what they have to do as an individaul to influence the outcome of a game, if they are off on sight seeing trips around France they are not having that time to prepare themselves mentally for what is going to be a really tough game.

I fully understand the reasonings behind staying out there, the travel disruption etc. but I question the itinerary whilst there, too much focus maybe on team bonding etc. and not enough on the task ahead, which in my opinion led to us being to complacent about how tough it was going to be, the players and coaches will know Catalans are a real force, especially at home, but I personally don't think they got the balance right and it showed on the day

How do you know this?

If for example the players are getting downtime on a Friday afternoon ahead of a Saturday game, how do you know X player isn't going sight seeing in the UK?

Can you also share this itinerary that you seem to have please?

Look you know I don't know this for sure, nor do I know their schedule other than what was reported by Wigan themsleves that they had been 'seeing the sights' whilst in France, but do you think the players looked focused and 'up for it' on the day in comparison to all the other games, they have been shaky at times in other games but never have they looked as out of touch with a game as they have against Catalans and I did say 'in my opinion'