Quote: bellycouldtackle "Money does mean that the wealthy clubs attract and keep better quality of players. That said there are many areas where we can improve and areas where are standards are just not acceptable and should not be accepted . Firstly I would suggest that our players are not as fit as the Wigan - Warrington players. This is an area that Brian Smith highlighted and was so dismayed that he brought a specialist over from Aus on a three month contract to try and get our players fit , he obviously had no confidence in our fitness staffs ability . Yet the same people who have season on season failed to get our players fit are still in their jobs . We seem to concentrate to much on strength training, from speaking to players who have moved on to other SL clubs they point to simple things like there were surprised by how much running they have to do in training at their new club. Wigan stated that it took them 4 months to get Tautai up to their required fitness standards . So it seems that we could be miles behind in this area and could therefore improve massively .
Secondly I think our senior players over the last few years are simply unprofessional, we have an attitude that runs through the players that results in inconsistancy of performance , one week we play with pride , desire , passion the next week we pack in and let 50 points in . Look at the desire of the best sides in defence , they simply fight for every inch of ground , they defend their line like their lives depend on it . To me this is all about professional pride and attitude . I am not counting the young players in this as they take their lead from the seniors but our attitude stinks . We have senior players who look like they simply do not care . Don't get me started on Kirke and Anderson but it that type of attitude that infects the place . Again this is an area that can be improved , we need to sign a couple of players who are leaders , who have pride in their job and will demand 100 % from the squad everyday.
I would suggest that our game plan can be improved , with the quality of players we can afford we need to keep it simple , respect the ball . We consistently give the ball to the opposition in our half and then don't have the ability to defend . We also give away more penalties then any other side . Again we can improve , a game plan which cuts down our error rate it easy to introduce , and professional players should be able to improve on the ammount of penalties they give away .
We need a new captain. We need some rugby brains in the side. Our defence has been poor for a long time , fitter players with a professional attitude , with a pride in performance , with a never say die attitude are better players .
So the good news is that we have areas that we can massively improve that should make us more competitive and a better side to watch .'"
your best post Belly - I concur with almost all of it!