I don't think anyone was expecting the youngsters to come in and put in world class performances. They have come in and done a job, not looking out of place at this level which is a huge positive.

What is worrying is how slow we look in attack when we have our first choice 1,6,7 and 9 on the pitch. We somehow looked faster last year with Finn and Grix playing.

Our handling and an effective last tackle play have been woeful this season.
One of the major plus points of having Brough in the side should be his ability to recue something from the 4/5th tackle, even if it's just getting a decent containing kick away.
I suppose with lots of changes and new players coming in, timings will always be affected but, our basic handling and passing skills have been truly awful, with balls getting passed to ground, into the crowd, having to be collected on the boot laces or above the heads of players.
This isn't acceptable at amateur level and bar the odd error, should definitely not be happening at SL level.
7/8 year olds pass the ball "anywhere" but pro players should be getting it right for the vast majority of the time.

I'm not sure that we did. I seem to recall that this was what everyone was moaning about last year and the year before too. Can't be d to look back through all the threads to find it but I reckon if I had some time to spare then I could find numerous examples of folk moaning about this exact problem.
Just because we're struggling now let's not rewrite history and pretend that it's worse now than it was last year.

If you look at the highlights from the last two years we have scored spectacular and well created tries from all parts of the field.
Even this year we had the kick from Brough against the flow for Miller or the switch of attack on a training ground move that were both on TV and both lauded at the time.
It's not that we can't. We are just not getting ourselves into the position to do it.

I disagree, we are getting ourselves in the position to do it, we just seem to lack all attacking structure when we get near the opponents line. Hull KR and Rhinos at home were prime examples where we had lots of field position but it is happening in most games. I think with Chester in the early days we used to score a lot of long range tries. Back end of last year and early this year we relied on a spectacular finish by TJ or BT/Pauli busting their way over. Maybe it''s just me but it doesn't seem like we're creating an overlap all that often this year.

Also seem to concede from kicks a lot more than we score from them which is annoying.

I think it is about what's happening at the end of a set - and that's affected by what's happening in the build up; we're just not laying a platform by making solid metres in the early part of a set, so we're clawing back some of those metres in the middle part, and subsequently scrambling for a finish, rather than executing a set move from a strong position.

Analyse it all you like, but our ability to execute on-field has been directly and self-evidently undermined by the loss of some of our best players to long-term injury; no team copes well with that, least of all us, with relatively limited strength in depth - and that's not in any way to diminish the efforts of Kershaw, Croft etc - but they're just not first team players yet, with good reason.

It holds true for defence too - the team is disrupted, uncertain, and lacking fluency and confidence in each other - and as such, the defensive structure we were lauding early season, has fallen apart.

John Kear can't fix this - only medicine and time can.