Ok i'll tell you what, you put on here the 17 you want playing week in week out to give us the best chance of winning, because to me apart from 3 or 4 at their absolute best, the rest are all pretty much the same ability wise. You have got to get your head around the fact that Ashurst & Tupou for example are not the same players as they were 3 years ago, injuries and age have seen to that. You mentioned a full back playing stand off the other night, a player who may I remind you Chester said last season he was going to give him a long run at 6 in the team........what happened to that masterplan? Did he not get mom at Salford before lockdown playing stand off? To me having Jowitt instead of Miller at 6 is not hindering the team from winning games, not having Battye & Kyle Wood for the first few games did not stop us winning those games etc, etc. If he has no faith in Kershaw, why is he playing him? He has options, Tupou or Lyne on the wing, Arundel and Croft available all season. I can't honestly now tell you what our first choice 17 is now, and like I said it doesn't really matter anyway because most of the squad are of similar ability like I've already said!! As a group, a squad, we are underperforming, and have been for almost 2 years, if you disagree with that, fair enough, that's your opinon.

We are underperforming ,we have been very lucky to stay in S L over the last two years .Compared to the rest of the teams in S L we are playing on a different planet A much smaller one .In fairness I can see what difference the new coaches have made.

Fair enough. You've certainly earned your right to have an opinion and you are entitled to it.
I was just wondering how you were measuring this 'pride' that the players used to have but don't have now?
Nostalgia can play an awful lot of tricks on your memory. Which players are not showing pride and passion? We are going through a tough phase, but we've been through much worse and come out the other end. I don't think anyone is happy with mediocrity, but rising above that is very difficult and takes time and money. I have not yet written off this year. If we get that first win we could get on a roll. Equally, it could go pear shaped and we get relegated. It's too early to tell.

The facts suggest that we have performed better over the last 5 years than we have at any point in the last 55.
Average finishing position over 55 years is 10.6, we have finished higher than that in every year that Chester has been in charge with an average of 7.8. The only other time we've done that is 1971 to 75 where we had an average of 7.2. Other than the 60s when we were arguably the best team in the world, when have we ever been more than mediocre?

We all want our club to be successful, but we have never been a consistently top 8 club since the 60s. It is different now that the game is fully professional and the stakes and jeopardy is much higher. In professional sport, money is king, until we get facilities that enable an increase in income, we'll never get there.
We are on the brink of that step forwards, don't give up now.

I absolutely agree.
I just think the solution is not to just sack Chester. There is much more to it.

I don't so much think they are under performing as individuals. I think they are putting effort in and many are performing at exactly their capability.

Adding some key players will pull up the team performance.
Expecting Kershaw to be TJ will just end in disappointment.

Correct me if I m wrong but pre super league wasn’t there 16 clubs in the top flight which would mean that we were 5.4 from the bottom of the table

Which we would all be grateful for in the super league era as we would have consistently ended in top 8, a position that seems beyond our realistic aspirations now.

As regards the team - we are pretty much putting out a full strength team bar 3 or 4 players which is just normal in the modern era. When we played leeds apart from wood and battye we had our whole squad to pick from, A massive step forward ? That would be a win! Or even to win a second half.

Maybe Chester is just unlucky on the pitch, but I don’t think there has been a coach in the modern era that has such a bad win rate generally and certainly that hasn’t either resigned or been sacked on back of it.

Haven’t even bothered watching the Catalan game sadly with the reduction in season ticket sales, drop in sky money I d be surprised if we even start next season if we don’t give something for the average supporter to get behind

????
League tables are measured from the top not the bottom.
Pre-73 there were 30 teams all in one division but being 20 from bottom still makes us the 10th best team.

//

Point I was trying to make was your analysis was quite misleading. As regards where you measure from that’s purely subjective - however you measure it this last two seasons are worst we’ve had in modern era 100 percent loss rate in current season equals relegation and finishing bottom

I like you dont think the solution is to just sack CC.the issues CC has brought isnt at this moment in time fixable.for me the biggest issues are signings and retentions for what ever reasons these have been overall poor for the last 2 years and will give CC sme slack for this with the current financial situation within the world due to covid.the issue is we cant just sack and bring in new players.that said this makes the decision to use player budgets on a extra coach baffeling.

That said we may be getting to the point where we need to try somthing different the clubs future in sl is hanging by a thread.we have seen it before example when tony smith came in he wasnt the greatest of coaches but results did dramatically improve for a short time.could the same happen again who knows.plus we have the a fifita money however big or small that is waiting to be spent which its important we do.

For me the this season is now just about finishing 11th anything else would be a shock and a bonus.but thats when and where we are quite fortunate as in alot of players and coaches are out of contract come the end of the seasonand should we stay in sl the opportunity is there to revamp both the playing squad and coaching set up.

An excellent, well argued post to be sure. What I would say though is that breaking down the last 5 years is necessary to explain the current disgruntlement of what is (seemingly/possibly) a large proportion of the fan base. It is our performances and success rate since May 3rd 2019 when we beat Shudds and in the league at that point we were W8 L6 in the SL table. Since then we are W8 L30 in SL games up to this point. That is a huge turnaround in fortunes and despite, IMO, the players clearly showing desire and effort, we are unable to win a game and look uncoached at times with the ball in hand. And similarly many would say on paper in the last few years we have had the best team we have had for many a year. I think this is where the ire is originating from.

I would agree with all that, but I'm still willing to accept that the last 2 seasons' poor performances were down to very special circumstances (massive injury crisis in mid 2019 - ok before and after - and then in 2020 Covid focus was just on completing fixtures by any means to satisfy the Sky contract.- lost focus on actually winning as with no relegation it didn't really matter). Even this year's poor start has some mitigation.
The situation is not really acceptable, but is understandable. Last year's seemingly random panic buying was a bit strange too. For all this, for me, Chester gets to the middle of the season to win 4 or 5 games, if not we still have time to recover (hopefully).

Not expecting Kershaw or Kay to be T J far from it . But I do not expect them to put there team under pressure by making basics mistakes When Hampshire had to play on the wing he never looked out of place ,infact won us a few games .Can not say the same about Kay or Kershaw at present

I agree about Chester now, but he should have been relieved of his duties in the off season. I have no problems with the players effort and attitude this season so far, it has been much improved, but when I say they are underperforming I mean they can play better, less errors, better decision making, being ruthless, better discipline, for me none of that has improved yet! Most of the few tries we have scored this season have been individual efforts, we create very little as a unit, we just offer very little threat with ball in hand, and that has to come down to the coach(es)

The next 4 games are massive, and are going to give us some indication of how things are going to unfold later on, and because we are so poor with the ball, i'm worried! We are in a hole and that digging out process has to start against Leeds, who are themselves going to be nervous and under pressure, let's see what we have to offer.......

Are you suggesting finding the average finishing position from the last 55 seasons is somehow cherry picking data?
Choosing the last two years, or even worse 20% of the current season, is truly cherry picking and hugely biased.

My point was that in my lifetime we have generally been the 10th best team in the competition. Even if your take the median to remove any outliers, your still get 10th, the mode is also 10.

The last 2 seasons we had 5/19 and 11/29 wins giving 16/48 or 33% win rate. Compare this to 2015/2014 where we had 3/23 and 10/27 making 13/50 or 26% win rate. so no, the last 2 seasons have not been the worst in the modern era.

When I get some time I'll maybe complete the data back to the beginning of RL, but I wouldn't expect any big changes.

Upshot is, we have been consistently the 10th best team in the northern hemisphere and anything above that is a bonus. Having only 12 teams in the top flight puts us in jeopardy and fundamental change will be required to get us above that lowly average.

There you go data from 1895 to presenthttps://i.imgur.com/h9AGBZu.png" >

The red line is a 5-year rolling average - currently the best we've been since the 70s.
Green dots are lower division
Yellow dots are Yorkshire league only
Orange dots are wartime emergency league
We've only finished top once (1944 wartime emergency league)
Our most successful decade was of course 1959 to 1968 (cherry picked) with an average position of 4.1, coming 2nd three times but winning the championship twice (via play-offs)


Guess what - average league position over 126 years:
mean = 11.0, mode = 10.0, median = 10.0

(I've been generous and included Yorkshire league placings even though there were effectively 2 pools)