Quote: stevie "It seems no matter what players we have or who is the coach as soon as a Trinity jersey gores on everything goes out of the window. Poor decisions, no variety in play and not so solid defence. For the past four or five years we have been unable to score tries from set plays. We only score opportunist tries most of the time and for the rest it is four drives forward and some sort of kick. Castleford showed us how a superleague team should be playing today.I thought against Leeds and Featherstone we did OK but I am beginning to have doubts now that it will be another struggling season.'"
Not just me and my dad thinking this then.
I get the team will not be cohesive as an attacking force but surely the following things that we never seem to do regardless of who the players/coach are should be fairly easy to implement straight away and then give us a base to improve on the attack:
(1) Line speed and meeting the attacking player instead of stood waiting for them
(2) Stop allowing half backs and acting halfs to run twenty yards across the field without a hand being laid on them
(3) Stand deeper and run on to the ball when we are in possession
(4) support the ball carrier (if someone was on Ashurst shoulder yesterday they would have been able to fall over the line for a score)
(5) practice fielding high kicks because we seem to be woeful at competing and winning the ball from them
(6) draw a man before you pass
(7) speed the passes up - Cas speed of pass was excellent giving them the time to create the gaps whereas ours was pedestrian meaning any semblance of a gap was quickly closed by the time the ball reached the recipient
I thought although we allowed easy yards at time and missed a few one on ones, there was at least a greater desire in trying to defend and we did prevent them scoring on a couple of occasions with decent scramble defence, but imo by not doing the basics right we make it harder for ourselves.
As Smith alluded to in his press conference we need everybody performing at a high level to compete with the likes of Cas and I think the problem we have is that the squad we have is not capable of performing consistently to the best of their ability and therefore whilst I suspect we will be in games for longer periods than last year, we are still likely to come up short on numerous occasions.
