I'm sure there are plenty of players around that could possibly make a difference to the team, I would have thought however that there should be enough in terms of playing resources at the club already to just stay up with one or two tweaks and some consistency in the starting line-up. If the aim was then to push on and aim for the upper end of the table next year then a few areas could be improved... say, a good quality loose forward, a centre, another half back for better cover.



I'm not sure what the implication is here to be honest. Demetriou brought more on the field than March does, both personally and in the other players he attracted and he brought the club forward in terms of bringing Super League practices to the championship. But if Demetriou thought March was the man to carry on what he started then he clearly was wrong as much of what Demetriou brought to the team has gone... namely a pretty stingey defence has been turned into a completely porous one.

Good post and I agree with most of it. I can't believe some have resorted to setting up a poll or blaming one player for our poor form. DJ is not in the best form of his life I think that is obvious and without knowing the ins and outs it's probably not fair to speculate about what's causing that.

I've said it from pre-season but we have a weaker side than last season and I felt we were always going to struggle to exceed the achievements of the previous season.

You mention it well, the main problem is our defence which has been poor to say the least. I can only presume this has been given a lower priority by March than JD.

To try and balance the critique of March, he is if nothing else a very approachable and nice guy. He is part-time and JD was full time. With than in mind, March will probably rely on others to compile the analysis. I'm guessing to a certain extent, but I bet JD did a lot himself. To quote styles you'd probably call Marchy an activist/pragmatist with JD being the opposite (reflector/theorist). In modern rugby I think the successful coaches tend to have the latter traits.

Woo woo woo he's magic you know youll never get past Danny Jones

I personally thought our main problem at the start of the season was injuries. It's seems to me that that's why the club had to resort to D/R.



Following the work by Kolb then Honey and Mumford it is recognised that people also fall [iacross[/i learning styles and don't align into neatly labelled groups. However, personally, I think JD was also activist/pragmatist. His tactics on the pitch seemed very simple and quite often it was his introduction to the field, playing character and force of personality that got us some tight wins.

You've made some very interesting points, it's refreshing to see someone back up their thoughts with detailed reasoning.

Personally I don't think March is as naive as you've suggested, but I do agree that we have been limited in tactics at times by player suitabilty/ability. There were plenty of matches where JD persisted with ploughing on with forward led one man rugby even though it was obvious it wasn't working. We should remember that our "loosing streak" started at the back end of last year under JD. I liked JD, by the way, it would have been interesting to see how he handled the D/R situation.

With regard to sloppiness of passes, I think we are trying to speed up ball movement across our attacking line and are sometimes passing before we have hold of the ball. I don't know how much we practice this but I would have thought it should be an area we concentrate on. If you watch top players they receive and pass the ball in one fluid movement. Fast ball opens gaps in sliding defences and gets around the end.

In the fist half against Batley, our fast attacking line speed scored us tries. John Kear obviously spotted this and briefed the team at half time. In the second half Batley sent fast runners to leap out from their defensive line and attack our playmakers. They were successful a number of times and broke up our attack/caused a sloppy pass.

If March were on the sidelines he might see much more than he does and be able to change our tactics to compensate for other teams plays. I don't know what his contract is but I suspect he gets paid both as a player and a coach and It being part time maybe he need both incomes.

We've reached (gone beyond) crunch time and something needs to be done to improve the team.

Or was it a case that JD saw how the game was going from the sidelines. He analysed the game as it progressed, identifying the areas of weakness in the opposition and exploited them following his introduction?

And why do you think he recommended him , Try thinking outside of the box
With your thoughts and I think you might just get to the correct answer.