It's quite interesting your facts and stats on the general level of performance of the forwards on Saturday. I say this because of Chester's post match comments, which basically layed the blame on said forwards for the inept display? We all know that stats in any sport don't tell the whole story, but for me we seem to have been conned into thinking we have a good pack of forwards, i'm not sure we have. Apart from Fifita I just don't see anything out of the ordinary, which is also compounded by selection and in particular players out of position, ie Tanginoa being 'killed' playing at prop. Where is Chris Green? A better version of Hirst for me, he should be in the 17 if fit. Tangata is a championship prop, Kopczack is just about done, Josh Wood is tenacious in defence and tackles well above his weight, but his passing accuracy is terrible, time and again the 1st receiver has to jump and twist to catch the ball and the whole passing movement falls down at the very start?! Ashurst looks a shadow of his former self, but mitigating circumstances as with Tupou because of serious injuries, but they both appear to be going backwards to me? The most worrying factor to me was, just watching the first 10 minutes it was always going to be a case of how many they were going to get, that can't be right at that level of sport, I didn't get that feeling watching any of the other games. Going right back to London last season, too many games where there just seems to be an apathy, a listless, lifelessness form the players, like they are coasting, going through the motions, no busting a gut, looking like they don't want it enough, you can't cut corners on an RL field, no hiding places, fans won't have the wool pulled over their eyes, it isn't rocket science is it?!

After reading all these comments it seems like it's the team's fault & not any of the coaches Interesting.... I'll just say this you can tell a coached side it even brings the average players on

Yes your right about the coaches role in all this shambles , but also we have to look at the apathy of the players and the reasons why they don’t want to put a shift in for the club . These aren’t wet behind the ear young lads ,most are seasoned pros .Either Chester isn’t getting his message across or the players ain’t listening, whatever the problem is it needs a reaction this week from players and staff

anyone with any knowledge of the game knows full well that our problems stem from the forwards, they are simply not functioning as a pack and that’s not to say we’ve not got the size or the personal. How can we possibly get on top we are getting smashed. We’ve ashurst stood out wide tipping on like an extra centre, one forward down, we’ve fafita running so far sideways he’s nearly in hull another forward down. We’ve the hooker passing it on and we’ve also any Tom dick or Harry running it in and passing awful slow ball out of the back. We play a second row at prop and leave our supposedly best forward on the bench when we should be getting a foothold in the match.
We are well capable of churning out a good result here and there but use what we’ve got right, hard and straight one after the other. This might actually give the backs a remote chance of doing something.
We played Wigan last week they had a young inexperienced pack out and we still got rolled when we should of basically bullied and tried to kick the crap out them even if it meant just running at them down the middle, the trouble is we never play any different for any team and it’s been same for a few year, we’ve been worked out it’s a simple as that.

That’s how I see it.

You and I have disagreed many times over Rocky whilst I’m convinced Jowitt is a future S/O but one thing is for certain, the way our forwards play at the moment neither will ever get the chance to prove us right or wrong.

It’s criminal that we have a stonking back line that never gets clean ball. If TJ were not such a freak acrobat he’d never score!! When did he last score a clean length of the field try. Truth is he never gets any space these days, hell we don’t even know if he’s recovered his pace since injury it’s so long.

The forwards are utterly dreadful at present. Nothing to do with size or fitness it’s attitude - I’ll be blunt, they are mostly lazy.

Honourable exceptions for Naverette, Tangata and Batch and Crowther but the latter are yet to play so who knows.

It’s those who should be leading who are at fault. Dave is simply not at the races, injuries or not he’s nothing like where he should be. Westerman was an utter liability and made Gigot’s efforts the week before look epic. Ashurst as Mopsey says is just hanging around in the centres and is a total waste. Koppy does the bare minimum, Tanganoa does what I think he’s always done, flatters to deceive.

The more I think about it the more annoyed I get. I hate to say it because I couldn’t match these lads, even the worst of them in my finest days but they are soft.

Sadly you can only be that way at a club where you can get away with it. If CC is failing this is where he’s failing. Sure he’s had no luck but you sometimes have to make that yourself.

when you have players like jowitt and Ryan who are not the biggest you can’t expect and they won’t run through brick walls but create them the space and it’s different, max as on several occasions supported Ryan’s breaks and finished them and I think they’ve played well together. Ryan as so much pace and if he goes through that should be it, try a chip over for him or give him early ball to use his feet or inside balls which were working well 18 months ago, it might not always come off but it puts it in the defenders minds sucks them in and then creates space out wide. Why can’t we just have fast ball across the backs instead of a trundling forward with limited passing ability handing it on. I honestly don’t mind getting beat but this team for months as bored the pants off me, it’s so predictable

I think I agree with you and Mopsey regarding the forwards. The halfbacks seem to get the brunt of it but we simply get steam rolled within the first 15/20 mins and then it’s a mammoth task to pull it back. The stats don’t look that bad on the forwards but that focuses on the full 80. I’d be interested to see what the stats were during periods where we struggled to break out of our own 30/40m. Plus the stats don’t show you how long it took us to play the ball or if we were dominated in collision or the wrestle?

I think we are starting to see the decline for some players. Not that they are bad players or have lost their ability just they are on the slide due to injuries etc. I’d like us to play Green, King, Batch and Crowther this week. Not sure what’s happened to Green? I know King is going but he tends to land on his front and can get a quick PTB. I hope to see Arona back in too as he’s a grafter.

I hope Jowitt gets another run out at HB as I’d say him and Miller have been our most effective combination lately with Rocky at FB. I do think we are reaching a stalemate though with regards to set plays and new ideas.

Think you’re being a bit harsh on Koppy there Vasty...think he’s been our best prop since the restart...19 carries for over 100 metres is not going through the motions or being lazy...those figures were just about the equal of Navarette and Tangata put together! Yes, Westerman had an absolute stinker but prior to the shutdown was playing really well so I’d easily forgive him that on his first start for months...

Pack do need to stand up though and be much tougher...get right in Catalans faces and they don’t like it...that is how we’ll beat them....on paper we’ve got a strong looking pack...if Green and Arona are fit they’d be great options to bring in along with Crowther and Batch...

Scoring is just a bonus for me with Hampshire as is his pace, however with backs like Tupou and TJ he could play on one leg so long as he had enough space to work in ditto Jowitt. At the moment and for some time none of our HB’s have had any space. This was partially masked last year by Brough who is a one off in that he has years of experience and with that a bag of tricks few other players in the world possess. Few players have Broughs single mindedness, Rocky, Max and even Miller need the team to function from 1-17 to be truly effective.

It’s no coincidence that the last effective HB we had who could get the forwards moving was Finn. Finn was fundamentally a 13 converted to a HB and seemed able to think for the pack. Highly unusual but it worked and in his way Finn was a genius. Now we have more conventional HB’s and we need to adjust and we just have not. It’s a team game and the five forwards on the pitch at any one time aren’t doing the job in my humble opinion.

One thing I have noticed is that the ball movement is so slow and sloppy since June/July last year. It seemed to coincide with Arona being out. If you look at the try highlights from 2016-2018 the ball often went through Arona onto the halfbacks who hit the ball at pace and then would hit the edges. It’s hard to assess this year as Arona has only played one/two games but I’d like to see us revert back to using him as it seemed to give our halfbacks more thinking time. I might be wrong but it’s something I picked up on some of our old games. Mind you we have to be in the oppositions 20/30 to try it.

You may be right regarding Koppy but unfortunately the pack are a unit and sometimes the eye just sees them as one.

Arona is a key man, definitely a cut above. We always look better with him on the park. Fifita can win you the odd game by his own but Arona seems to ensure we are competitive even if we don’t win. He’s my number one first forward on the team sheet every time.

I think Arona is a real leader and never really noticed it until he was out last year. He does a lot of the things that we have been missing. Working from marker, pressuring the kicker etc. I actually think he’s more of a pack leader than most of the other forwards inc Fifita.

Interesting reading some of the comments

When you watch the players at the mo the ones who had the bad injuries don’t look like the players of that amazing 2018 team (I believe they still are those players) So it’s understandably they aren’t quite at the races currently

I can remember Bill and Tinni would both hit the line and pump there legs like a steam train, like there lives depended on it and it was near guaranteed to put us on the front foot

A typical kick return would be Tommy first , then Bill, the defence are already all over the shop because of the effort to put those two down, at this point and were maybe in our own 30-40 yard line
Then Dave booms it in and produces an offload shifting the ball to our left away from Bill and Tommy
Then arona comes in links the play to Miller who is buzzing back over the left
The defence don’t know if he’s going to hit Ashurst or Bill or take the line on but something devastating is about to happen

We were so effective from deep, almost unstoppable

It’s understandable after awful injuries particularly to legs that the foundation of what we we’re so good at we can’t do at the moment

I do think we need an organising scrum half like Tim but I also think we need a few of there players back at there best, it may come quickly, who knows

They need to find that amazing confidence in themselves and each other again

The only way to do that is to grind some wins out, we have an excellent team we are very capable

Interesting.

Truth is we are all guessing as we don’t true team dynamic. Unlike individual sports there are so many factors that determine how a team performs.

Injuries play a huge party but when you really think about it the challenge to get 20+ young men to function as an effective unit frankly baffles the mind. Here are just a few things that can seriously effect a teams performance apart from injuries.

Personality clashes, most likely with new signings.

Age

Confidence loss

Personal/family issues

Monetary issues

Pressure from agents and other outside issue

None RL related health issues

And there are many more, bad enough in a single sportsman but multiply that by 30 and it looks impossible at times. When to many of the above collide it gets hard to motivate a team or even just get it to function correctly.

At some clubs like Saints there is a level of inertia that helps stave off the worst but at Trinity where failure is more the norm it gets harder.

Being a team manager in sport has to be one of the hardest jobs on earth. It’s hard enough to motivate 30 young men to sell life insurance efficiently, how hard must it be to get 17 of those 30 to perform at their peak ability for 80 minutes for roughly 26 weekend a year.

Being a coach or being a top player, not as easy as it looks.