A very poor performance by the boys last night but the last thing they need is fans calling them, there probably as gutted as us all, stelf, how many tackles did D.J miss ?

We are not Dewsbury fans who turn on the players after one bad performance, disappoointing yes but never slag the players off after all they kept going to the end, fact is were were beat by a quality outfit.

I think the club is in a bit of a catch 22 on this.
Do they spend money and then go down, or do they wait till next season and spent money?

I singled out Danny Jones because he had a good game with the highlight being yet another 40-20 which was up the slope of Post Office Road. I don't recall him missing tackles I'm prepared to corrected on that though as I'm not a statistician. For a half back his defence is very good and he made some good tackles last night.

People are entailed to there opinion.
We don't all have to agree with.

calling players turnstiles in my opinion is slagging -off and not good at all, nobody was more gutted than me, but were all in this together, we knew this season was going to be a hard and some times frustrating, but we as fans need to give the lads 100% win or loose, thats my opinion, cougars till i die....

Fair do's. One thing you will realise with me is that I call it how I see it. When we play well I praise the players, when we play badly I will critisise them.

I try to be constructive, but Fev good as they are, at times went through our defence far too easily especially on our left-hand side where poor tackling technique was exposed. Far too often tacklers were going too high on bigger and stronger players which led them either being handed off or the tackle busted leaving the tackler spinning like a turnstile.

It's simple physics Mass x Velocity = Momentum and all that, but if they go for the legs there's a better chance of stopping them. The age old "you can't run without legs" what they taught in tackling practice as a kid springs to mind.

When some of our smaller players are trying to tackle like prop forwards it's asking for trouble.

You might call it slagging off. Others may say, its calling it as it looked.

I have to say I am suprised by some comments here, I am in agreement with Wonderer.

We played poor against Featherstone but remember they are top of the league for a reason and unbeaten because they are a quality side.

As for the reference to some players being turnstiles I think its poor, over last few weeks when we have been playing well and the defence was solid how come there was no reference to turnstiles then.

Frustration with the performance is one thing but slagging the team off like this is in my eyes sad to see.

As said before poor performance but against best team in division get real folks.

I think you answered your own question there Pete.

I'm not going to call players turnstiles if they put in an immence defensive effort like they did against Dewsbury or Sheffield.

This was one of the worst defensive displays I've seen in years compounded by the fact we played a very good side who took full advantage of every mistake we made.

I respect your opinion Pete, I really do. But I, like you , paid £14 to stand, cheer and watch that on Thursday. I think that entitles me to harshly criticise if I think the performance was sub-standard.

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, or being honest (from your perspective) about how a player/team performed.

If a player can't take a bit of stick then they are in the wrong game. However, there is a fine line when constructive criticism turns into something destructive and I think that at cougars we don't have many people who do that. I think our players are genuinely proud and feel lifted by how we respond when things don't go right.

We still have a couple of "supporters" who target individual players with abuse from the terrace and although this may be called "saying it as they see it" I personally think its counter productive. If a player is down on form or confidence, shouting abuse isn't going to solve it.

I thought it interesting to compare the Widnes and Fev games. Widnes burst our line across the park but Fev targeted individuals - they even ran across the line by 40m to get to them. IMHO It is a solvable problem - our defensive line needs to move straighter and faster and certain individuals need to re-learn how to tackle. Oh, and we need to keep supporting our team



We knew it was going to be a long hard season and it still remains a very tough task.

Our expectations have been raised by our gradual improvements and perhaps this has given us and the players a reality check.