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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 present:



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)

Nicely done there. That's a brilliant set of data. Saved a copy

I agree

When he gets a job for a top club please let us know

Coco you can churn out all the data you want from the very beginning if you want but that only tells half a story .The players we have at our disposal are far better equipped to produce a much better standard of rugby than ever their predecessors were .Diet ,fitness ,conditioning,full time ,and yet what I see is a team lacking at times the very basic core skills of RL, which is seen all over the north on a weekend from professional to amateur . If people are happy to see players week in week out making silly unforced errors and blame it on them been of poor quality ,get out and watch some amateur games and see the quality they produce on a regular basis . I truly hope we pull through this ,but to put the blame squarely on our supposedly average players and not to a big part on the coaching set up truly baffles me .

The problem is, so are everyone else's.