Quote Tricky2309="Tricky2309"No what has been laughable is some of the teams performances and the fact you don't think there is anything wrong with the conditioning when it's plain to see we play at a pace far slower than pretty much every other team in SL and can't get off the defensive line half the time
If you want to kid yourself that injuries were the only reason for not being competitive thats your prerogative but I think you will find attitude and fitness have been reasons in a number of games'"
There's no doubt we need a new conditioner, especially if we want to keep improving as a team & have said so on various occasions, that Clawson's had his time with us & t's time to get someone better.
Saying that there is a lot of truth imo in what upthecats said. We simply don't have the squad depth, especially to keep up with the rest of the Top 8 when we've had substantial injuries. There's no getting away from it.
Generally games have gone in the S8's the same way; we get dominated in the forwards from the start, that means we're on the back foot, tackling far more than the opposition, which knackers the team out more than a closely matched team would. That leads to the halfbacks having no platform, which makes them look poor, as well as the rest of the backs. Then the opposition get a lead and heads go down. The last 2 games have shown even though we lost, that when some players returned, we competed well and if we'd have had Moore on the pitch, with his extra craft and skill out of acting halfback, we'd have probably won both imo.
Obviously there's a bit more to it than just injuries, that's caused the drop off in standard in some of the games, especially since the Super 8's started. Such as not much to play for, especially when your playing against teams that do, that leads to that say 5% drop off in intensity and leads to blow outs. Also a sense of a bit of an attitude of job done by some of the players, mostly senior ones at that.
There's probably no one that's been more disappointed as me at some of our efforts lately. But like he hints at, when you hear some people around here, it's like we've had a poor season and we'll be defo back in the MPG next season. It's crazy talk.
I think the effort it took when Chester came in to get us to where we were are. Where we didn't have to worry about the MPG, plus also getting to the Semi of the CC, probably took more out of the players than we realise.