Quote: knockersbumpMKII "Our expectations have risen because of the CC wins, because we have a great squad of players, because we are passionate and want to win and when we get a sniff we do feel disappointed when we don't get everything we want. I think we've had a good season, with the squad we have, one that is even better than last seasons, there should be an expectation to be in it for silverware at the pointy end.
Connor has being a revelation, Kelly has being at times sublime, Sneyd has proven his doubters wrong and has improved IMHO, young players like Fash have come through to show they are worthy of a place in the 17 and some performances were absolutely top drawer against the top sides in the league (Cas in the CC and home league game plus Leeds in CC)
Radford has learnt that rotating players is an absolute must, injury or not, that was what cost us last year ultimately, that and the post wembley headache, he changed that this year and acknowledged early on (In the pre-season friendlies) that he needed to involve the younger squad players more and trust to them.
At times in attack we've looked fantastic, at time in defence we've being brutal.
So, all that said, why have we been so far off the pace of Cas and massively inconsistent? Too often our discipline has let us down, too often the mental preparation seems nonexistent, too often we put in really poor performances especially at home, not because we don't have the ability or personnel, but because we didn't turn up or just lapsed for long periods. That is as much down to the coach as it is the players.
Too often our line speed in defence is shockingly slow, too often we are missing tackles (worst in the league for it by a big margin), too often giving away posession, we made the 3rd highest amount of tackles, only just behind salford and saints), we made too many errors, 2nd only to Saints. Too often we look short of ideas in the 20m and are relying on a kick, we were very low down in the tries scored dept (7th I think) and Sneyd's goalkicking has won us a heck of a lot of games. catalans are the only other side to kick more goals than tries scored (just one in their case).
Given everything and how we were going to push on and with a better rounded squad than last year I think its a 7.5/10 season, as I said though, our expectations are higher now so if we had gone from doing nothing to winning the CC and being so close to getting the league leaders and GF appearance like last year then that score would be higher..
Some things are very good, some aspects have improved but there are still the same problems rearing their head that means the difference between being CC winners and 3rd place to being at the top table for both.'"
You still can’t give Radford any credit, can you. If you’ve got a season pass I’ll buy it off you and get crowd funding to put a wilted pot plant in your seat.