Quote 18th Man="18th Man"I thought once again we looked miles off SL standard. We just seem to be winning on fitness and size in the second half. The score flattered us today.
I'd keep Walmsley away from FB, he seemed reluctant to take a high ball and kept letting it bounce.
Swinton had a good kicking game, apart from the one that didn't go ten. We could learn a lot from that.'"
I don't understand why you say this because It's not a surprise, as we had so many changes from our normal 17, especially our spine and 2 backrowers, one debuting and the others being out a fair bit. Plus players are out of position because of knocks etc. Anyway, what's miles off SL, playing like Hull, Cas or London, because watching them I'd say our defence is far better than those teams and so is our pack even accounting for comp, so IMO we'd beat those teams with our full team out and give a couple of others a good game, but hey opinions.
If we were getting a team ready to play in SL team some guys aren't going to be playing and are getting replaced, as we know from what our recruitment manager says, so why do we have to be SL quality in the Championship? Surely we aim to gradually build this season, see who we want to keep for next season and bring in about 9 players, that the club have said they have lined up.
If/when we get put back in SL don't you think our team's going to look quite a bit different?
As for today's game, you seem quick to talk us down, sure we weren't as clinical in defence as we usually are but don't acknowledge that we had a guy at FB who wouldn't be there if we thought we'd struggle, and had a half-back pairing of a 20-year-old prospect and a full back, have they ever played together? and we're only winning because we have a good pack who are fit, I don't agree. Generally, the backs have put in some big games this season, supporting the forwards in back play, keeping teams out and scoring when given a chance. I'm not sure what you expect at this level, for us to nil every team and score 50+.
I don't want to take anything away from Swinton they played far better than expected, but we let them in for some easy points, especially when we only average 10 a game.
We play down the middle because that's where our strength is atm and all our Props are top quality, which makes it hard for the Championship sides to keep being hammered all match without us gradually getting on top. Just like some SL teams do with good big packs, some play more off the cuff because they haven't got the pack to march teams down the field. It's no surprise probably the best team in SL have a monstrous pack and do similar and then their backs play off the back of them in Wigan. That's what we have to contend with hopefully next season.