According to Mash in the press ,looks like Fordy was one of the major problems why our attack was dire. Will be interesting to see if things are different tomorrow. Let's hope we can put up a fight

Ahh the good ol' 'it's not me guv, it was the guy who just left'

Is there a link?

One thing that has been playing on my mind is Sreve Ella's interview with the Heritage boys.

He talks about the year he was here. He said we started off with some great wins but Graham convinced Toppo to change style to how he played in Oz. We hardly won another game. Ella said the team just couldn't get it.
When he left at Christmas Ella suggested we go back to a more simple game plan and we started winning again.

I wonder if that's happening here. If Ford is attack coach and hes been trying a new way, and we simplify it now he's gone, it might make a difference.

We have a strong but slow 3/4 line. If we try to play fast rugby it probably isn't going to work. Maybe just sending big lads in the centres through a half gap with a slip ball offload....with runners, it'll punch holes.

To be fair if he was the attack coach then he's right, although head coaches take the liability of their staff so he's just as culpable. We couldcdo worse than having Gale put some structure to our offence.

How much simpler can we get then nothing.

how much more simple can it be? barge our way over with no attacking shape or plays seems to be the plan at the moment.

That isn't what they are doing in my opinion.
They are attacking with forwards, trying for a quick ptb but not getting it, trying to pass out wide but doing it too slowly, so whoever gets the ball has 2 defenders already on them, so it looks like we have no shape.
If we actually tried to barge over you'd have big runners standing deep with lots of dummy runners.
The wingers won't get a nice pass but the centre will have a better chance.
Add a short kick for players to chase and you have a simple game plan for a slow team.

Just read it. That was quite a dig wasn't it.
I guess we'll see soon who was right.

Well, you could say that about [ianything[/i.
I'd rather hear from a club official than the bloke down the chip shop........

Can somebody tell me what the issue is here?
Ford jumped ship (he was committed to the RW and B wasn’t he!)
The club got wind and told him to go now so what’s worth all this debate?

The email from the fan to MC may have given him a poke to kick someone up the and get a press release issued but I doubt that it affected any content within the release.

Now have an option to demote MA, put him under a more experienced coach for 12 months to gain more experience or less surprising option, give the job to Gale.

I thought Carter was stubborn and doesn't listen to anyone.
Now he's caving because a guy on RW&B emailed him.
Get a grip.

I think you are correct here, I think a lot of our issues in attack are due to how slow we are and that all starts at the PTB where I don't think any of our Hookers are good enough at the moment. Hood is far to slow and so is Kay when it comes to that first Pass, Bowes is the best we have at it but is still not great but does have time to develop.

The problem is our play the balls are too slow, we don’t have a single forward who can win the collision, find his front and give us a quick play the ball!
Not disputing that the quality of our hookers isn’t good enough, with the exception of Bowes who is still young lad, learning the game and has loads of potential

Yep, that attacking issue we've got was definitely all Ford's fault

Jesus wept he only left a couple of days ago. Not saying it WILL improve bit at least give it a week or so. Bloody stupid post

You could tell the players were trying to move the ball more. We scored 2 tries out of doing it and had a long break.
It's just the ball is still moving too slowly.

We were just very lateral and still had no runners to give the ball carrier options. Lam, and to a lesser extent Reynolds, showed us how an effective half back combination should operate. Lam in particular had all the time in the world to decide what to do with the ball and had numerous options with which to use.

Talking about Reynolds. He’s out of contract and I’d be looking at him as a halfback option for 2024.

Has he now been forgiven by all those fans slagging him off when he was here before.
Shows that sometimes you have to stick with young players like Smith and give them time

I can’t remember people slagging him off, he only played 6 games and from memory he didn’t start all of them.
If there was criticism I think it was about why we signed him if we weren’t going to give him a fair go

I do.

But your other bit is exactly the point. A young lad learning shouldn't just be thrown in. Sometimes you buy for the future. Especially with some of our fans.

If anything a lot of people were noticing how he and Hampshire were playing well together. But as soon as Brough and Miller were “fit” again…