There seems to be two points emerging on this topic, penalties and pressure and second half performance.

Firstly, the decision to take the two or not is horses for courses. Keighley currently are low on confidence and full of mistakes and the decision to keep the score board ticking over and put distance between themselves and Workington, considering they won, has to have been the right one. If the situation was different and they were scoring tries for fun then I'm sure the decisions would have been different.

The second half performance was a combination of a few things.
- Workington saw how Keighley were playing and their experienced players picked at our weaknesses, the main of which was choosing to target Parkinson's defending in the middle of the park. They ran over the top of him and made breaks or got quick play the ball and got a roll on... leading to the second point.
- A combination of forced mistakes and penalties allowed Workington to gain momentum.
- The D/R half back they had showed his quality and made a difference near the line, breaking us down when with roles reversed Keighley were well marshalled.

I think that a coach on the sidelines for Keighley should have been able to spot what Workington were doing and tried to change the defensive structure to suit. However they didn't but the fact that Keighley clung on will hopefully give them confidence to put some better performances together.

We have for some time been unable to cope with teams who raise their tempo through fast "play the ball". We seem unable to maintain a clean defensive line allowing breaks through the gaps. Unlike Fev, Leigh and Halifax we are poor at "legally" slowing teams down resulting in penalties against us.

This a area of the game we have never seemed able to get a grip on.

I agree. As I've said in previous posts, Keighley's main issue is the contact area. We don't win the impact, control the tackle, wrestle and get numbers involved to slow down the tackle area legally. I think this is probably down to coaching partly but I also think that certain other teams benefit from Super League experience, partly through D/R but also partly through older players dropping down a league.

If you watch any good teams, they are built on their defence... anyone who watched Hull v Leeds last night would've seen a bit of a masterclass from Hull in how to win a game from a solid defensive base. You need to be ferocious and aggressive but also technically good at holding the man up and slowing down momentum.

Agree, if my memory serves me correct there was much debate last season about Wigan's tactics in this area. They were dominating the ruck and slowing teams down.

I agree also that this is our area of weakness and maybe something JD offered more than Marchy maybe due his more recent SL experience. Equally as concerning for me is our lack of ability to read and nullify our oppositions game plan. It's clear they are sussing us out. I accept when Marchy is on the field it's maybe more difficult for him to see, but he relies on Glenn and Jeremy for this.

We also seem to suffer when Buster is off the field. Maybe it's not just his presence, but his organisation and influence?