Quote: Large Paws "Because of the self belief that grows in the team when they have taken teams close and or beaten them. As I said, they have been able to play, unfettered by the pressures felt by others. Good on them and they deserve the praise.
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That same observation could also be applied to us. We know we can't relegated, it's been patently obvious since Easter that we would not be in the play-offs, so it could be argued that since April we have merely been playing games on an individual basis without any tangible pressure being applied to us.
Across that middle-period of the season we did appear to making some small improvements; a couple of welcome wins, a feeling that we were at least being competitive even in those games when we lost (Cas, Hudds, Wire, Salford, etc.). You would have thought that after the Wigan victory there must have been a modicum of self-belief within the playing group, in the context of a still poor season.
But in recent weeks we've gone back to how things were in the dog-days of Smith's reign, with the coach seemingly unable to alter the mind-set of the players while giving the impression of not particularly caring anyway. This is the complete opposite to a London outfit who have taken their situation and turned it into a positive. Whatever the situation, we are once more under-performing to a massive degree even without any pressure being especially applied to us.
The fact that Hull Fc, as a club, appeared to have given up completely is totally down to internal reasons and personnel with their attendant attitude rather than any external pressures from other sides. This is all our own making, no-one else.
