And nothing at all like the Wigan/Saints 'ethos'........

when you lost 75-0 to saints how did that result happen and im not been clever just wondering what was going on at your club at that time for that to happen

from my memory it came off the back of another HUGE loss at Leeds (72-0??), with a lot of young players out of their depth. i imagine a lot of that team didnt have much of a career.
they tried hard, but saints have always been the most dangerous team on a roll, and boy were they rolling that day.
funnily it didnt feel as bad as the cup final losses from the terraces (lovely day as well from what i remember)

That was a terrible week. We lost 0-70 to Leeds in the league and then 0-75 to Saints in the cup (QF I think). We had a team full of kids on both occasions with not much experience between them. The teams in those games included the likes of Joel Tomkins, Bryn Hargreaves, Martin Aspinwall, Dave Allen, Bob Beswick, Stephen Wild, Kevin Brown, Harrison Hansen and Sean Gleeson (IIRC he made his debut at FB v Saints). So its not as if they were never seen again at Wigan or in SL. They just weren't up to facing two very good Leeds and St Helens sides all at once at such an early stage of their careers.

Following that win I sure that the RFL will be sat down now trying to come up with a rule that will stop us scoring so many points.
Remember in the 90s they altered the kick off so that the scoring side had to restart ( trying to stop back to back scores like yesterday.)
Also if Wigan had have won the GF from 5th like leeds have done I am pretty sure that the RFL would have reintroduced a 'Top 4 playoff the following season'

JUST WATCH THIS SPACE

Hurrah top post and at last a SL fan seeing Fat Controller aka Nigel Wood for what he is, Mr Spin who is destroying our game and has created a chasm between fans of SL clubs and the rest, those of us who are left below SL and they are dwindling down here because of the Franchise system there is no interest. I know I go home and away with Halifax RLFC and see the actual crowds and it is shocking, I am sad when I see them it gives me no satisfaction at all to see a third and sometimes up to nearly half the crowd at away games being from Halifax, many times less than a thousand and away fans coming to us can often be counted between ten and twenty!
Sad thing is there will be those on here who will attack me for this saying I am just negative, well so be it but the truth will come out one day, hopefully not too long now as the game is in decline and the score at Hull KR is in my opinion partly down to a lack of RL players playing the game and part of that has been caused by selfish SL clubs doing away with 'U23's or Reserve grade' teams to save money passing the buck onto Championship clubs to take their dual reg players when they have a player available or not!

The key element of why we got annihilated yesterday, IMO, was that Shaun Wane is reinventing the idea of how to go about winning a game of rugby league. The cliche of "getting in the arm-wrestle" has been thrown out of the window by Wane and instead, he's directed your team to attack edges as early as 20-40m from your own line routinely. Now I'm not saying that other teams don't do it because they do, but the regularity and execution of how your team does it is utterly devastating.

We've had a million different players on our right edge this year and we've really struggled with our defence on that side in terms of the defensive reading of out the back plays and such and yesterday we had some inexperience out there who where engaging the Wigan man with the ball just that little bit too long and the overlap appeared again and again.

A few back-to-back tries and our huge forwards stated tiring really badly through chasing back all the time - perhaps a strategy why Wane uses these tactics and why your pack seems to be smaller than most in the league but on the plus side they are immensely physically fit and mobile.

I thought before the game if we could negate your threat on the edges early doors and dragged you into a forward battle, that maybe there would be a chance of us turning you over but in hindsight that was never going to happen.

I've looked at the stats in terms of tackles made by both sides in their last two matches before yesterday and they were fairly similar in terms of tackles made and carries so either the game against Cas on Sunday night played at -7degrees on a heavy pitch (a day later than your match) or the physical and emotional effort of the derby game against Hull when the fans probably kept the players going during long periods without possession and some of that time having a man in the bin, or it could have been an accumulation of both.

Regarding the point about the KR/FC rivalry, the vast majority of fans of both sides are not content with simply getting one over on each other - we both want to win trophies like Wigan, Wire & Leeds but what the rest of the rugby league community don't understand is that both sets of fans share a city which makes the rivalry as constant as being a fan of a club itself which is a naturally a more intense dynamic than having rivalries of two separate towns - regardless of what anyone says. There's also the pressure of the local media which target which ever club/coach is doing worse than the other.

Regarding Craig Sandercock, he comes from Aus with a reputation of developing players which is second to none - 7 of his juniors at Manly in 2009 went on to win the Grand Final in 2011 and I know he came to the club and has said there's a world of difference between between the physical development of our young players and that's something he wants to address but it's going to take time.

Yesterday we had the fewest overseas imports playing in our 17 - only 4 so maybe that's the legacy he's been left with and it's gonna take a long time to reverse.

Excellent post. Looking at HKR academy sides they look as though they are getting to a competitive level. The fix is going to take a few years but clubs need to realise that investment in youth is the way to go, however just an U19's is NOT the answer.

Good post but we only had 2 overseas players playing Monday Blake and Richards all the rest apart from Smith and Taylor came through our acadamy .Our chairman in his wisdom is relying on English trained players and not overseas as they are too expensive ,when an overseas player left he used his salary to upgrade the young players contracts .This looks like it is the way to go for the last 5 years we have been building the youth set up and now we have a conveyor belt of up and coming players.Who knows if every team follows suit in 10 years time we could have a great England team.

Assuming we can keep them all out of Rugby Union.

That has to become a new priority for the British game.

just looked at the squad on show again, especially the pack and replacements. If you look at their age as at 01-01-13 then the starting pack average age was a whopping 22-23 yrs old and the 4 replacements were 21-22 yrs old......and not an overseas player amongst them.........If we can keep them out of the clutches of Yawnion or the Aussies we could have them together for the next 8-10 years..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

....and the really scary thing is that most forwards do not reach their playing peak until their later twenties or so.