Quote: upthecats "Was he wrong on Pauli though?
When he first signed he really looked the part but towards the back end he was pathetic. I’ve watched him closely 2 or 3 times since for Salford and despite some saying watch his Ian Watson and Salford will transform him he’s still the same overweight, lazy, heartless, under achieving player he was for us.
Also think he’s handled the Fifita thing the best he can...Dave is obviously a fantastic player when on song but with that will come a difficult person to manage and handle and I honestly think in his time overall Chester has handled him really well...we don’t all see what he’s like to manage day in day out.
Yes, the performances of late haven’t been good. Huddersfield was a poor result but I’ve a theory behind it and it’s something that’s blatantly obvious to most people what changes ‘on the field’ need to be made. Chester knows this himself and said as much in his interview after the game.
1) We need a midfield general.
Some use the Kear factor, some blame assistants, conditioners etc...but it’s plain to see where our biggest problem lies. Finn, though at the twilight of his career was a great signing for us and managed us through games...I’d also add Grix into that...not because I thought he was the greatest individually but as an experienced older head in a crucial position he was massive.
Finn obviously couldn’t go on forever and we needed to replace him...Brough looked a perfect replacement (even if arguably a few years past his best) but working with restricted budgets, unfortunately those are the type of players we end up with.
To begin with it worked...despite fans saying we’ve been garbage since those two good 5th place finishes and since Kear left etc...with Brough and Miller playing well together we were sat 3rd in the league after 14 rounds and had chalked up some excellent wins playing some fracking stuff...the injuries then hit and in truth we haven’t recovered. I did think Brough did have an impact towards the back end in saving us though, playing and kicking well in crucial wins over Huddersfield/HKR and London.
The fact is we haven’t replaced got a Finn/Brough type player and it’s killing us...it could not have been made any clearer in the loss at Huddersfield where the clear and plain difference between the two teams was Sezer for Huddersfield. The forwards actually worked pretty hard and as a whole defended pretty well overall...there was 5 or 6 players who made over 100 metres in carries and a couple just short so in terms of field position we had plenty just no execution or smartness on last plays and that’s what’s killing us.
2) The forwards...
Another thing we can all see and CC has said it himself...prelockdown overall the performances and results weren’t too bad...since coming back though we are certainly one of the teams who has really seemed to struggle with the new quicker game and the set restarts etc...
When looking into it though ask yourself this...we make our pack up of predominantly ‘past it’ players or loan signings that very few other teams want...maybe pre lockdown these players and us as a team maybe benefitted from slowing rucks down but now everything has quickened up it has caught quite a few players out...I’ve heard CC mention this a few times about what’s now needed from forwards...maybe he knows what changes need to be made? Like when he first took over he identified quickly that we were getting bullied a bit so went and signed big players...that worked back then but now it doesn’t and changes have to be made.
For all the criticism of the forwards just go look at the tackling stats from the game...
It’s blatantly clear where the weak links were defensively...bit of an eye opener...'"
You make a lot of good points and I agree with you on certain things......but a couple of things, we didn't get to third place then suddenly had 9 men injured all at once! Tupou & Johnstone went for the season in March over at Hull, we lost 3 against Wigan at home in April, and others one at a time. The main problems started when players came back from injury, that second game at London was not a team of academy kids, it was good enough to have performed, but there's the whole problem, whatever team takes to the field have underperformed! Hence all the criticism!! Scraping a win every 6 or 7 games which we have done since last May is relegation form, it can't all be blamed on injuries, someone or more than one person has to take responsibility for the demise over that period, nothing has changed or generally improved, so that's why we are where we are, over 25 - 30 games it's not a fluke! Either as a group of players minus one or two individuals, they aren't good enough to perform on a regular basis........OR the coaching staff aren't getting the best out of them?!
