After a couple of patchy performances I thought a week off would do us good and set us up for a play off push. Not to be. Not for the first time a week off seems to set us back which is worrying as there is another one coming up after Wakefield.

Some really flat performances last night and Smith has one hell of a rebuild on his hands.

To be fair, I think TS has mainly achieved the targets for this set of players, this season:
¶ Avoid relegation - achieved
¶ Reconnect support and club - achieved / ongoing
¶ Avoid blow out scores - achieved so far
¶ Develop whole club playing style and young players - ongoing
¶ Commence rebuild of first team squad-ongoing (2 seasons?)
¶ Gap between best and worst performance narrowed - partly achieved / ongoing

A play off spot would be nice but an over achievement.

Woke up hoping I’d dreamed that absolute show. Probably unfair to bag individuals but Dwyer, Lovodua, and Lane shouldn’t be playing in SL. Satae had one of his CBA games, and Ligi was trying too hard to go sideways.

Will say I like Litten as he has a knack for getting away with fumbles. Rather have lucky than unlucky players in my squad!

Jam next season folks… or maybe the season after.

Disappointing performance.
The first PTB set the tone, for the remainder of the 80 minutes, our mentality and attitude was not up to our usual standard.. We lacked composure in attack, with Dwyer it's hardly surprising. Clifford's gone off the boil since he announced he's returning to the NRL. In defence, not enough tackles around the bootstraps for mine. Personally I'd like to see Balmforth and Staveley (fitness permitting) given a chance.
For mine, the team lacked enthusiasm, maybe due to no replacement for Griffin, this attitude maybe derived from the hierarchy, not bringing in a loaned player, showing no desire to aim for a play off spot. Evans and Griffin have both gone , and no short term replacement have arrived.

Let's see how our attitude is, against a team fighting for survival.

Overall I’d say a disappointing loss that could very easily have been a win if only we’d tidied our attack up. We made some strange decisions all night in both defence and attack- but mainly in attack. Truey and Cliff seemed a little disconnected tonight and that might have something to do with Hudds having a quick line and closing Cator down who is the link man. Thought Litten had a quiet game but you get inconsistencies with youngsters. Satae and Dwyer were really disappointing and we lost any sort of direction when Houghton went off- we need a real leader in the mould of Houghton to come in to the team next year if Houghton decides to retire.

Need to focus on next week quickly, I wouldn’t blood any youngsters Unnecessarily next week as I feel the pressure will be on and any errors or poor play will result in the home crowd becoming quickly frustrated- which I’ve seen happen a numerous amount of times.

Think people are been a bit harsh on Litten, Connors 40/20 was sublime and their kicking game was clever. They chose to kick short and make it a contest and he gave a good account of himself in regards to that.

He’s a definitely a running threat but at the minute doesn’t offer much hall playing ability.

Also Joey clearly isn’t good enough but it’s ludicrous to focus on him for yesterday’s performance. He’s a hooker that can play second row. He’s had to jump into the centres in a poor side.

We’re just not an honest side, they need to stop trying to cut corners. Sometimes it’s better to play through a team/enjoy the arm wrestle than try play round them

The opening set of 6 set the tone for us for the rest of the match, bad passing, struggling to get out of our 20-30m line, it's obvious how badly we need more size and aggression in the pack. A pack containing too many lightweights like fash, cator, lovodua and lane...and then having two hookers on at the same time with the best of the two playing at 13 won't worry many teams in the league.

The bit I underlined highlights the poor choices that Clifford makes when he kicks. Its always straight down the pitch and he never seems to attempt a 40/20. I'm not bagging him as such as I believe he's a very good player and offers a lot to the team, its just this thing that irks me.

That was one of the most mediocre games of rugby I have ever seen. Mostly in the middle of the pitch and the difference was Giants couple of 40:20s allowing them to build a bit of pressure. There was so little sustained pressure from either side even the defence was nothing to get excited about. Giants deservedly won. Trueman should be fined for his stupidity.

Agree the opening to the game with that sloppy and awful pass and players just looking at each other to collect it showed the players just weren't switched on at all, we've seen it enough over the years. Though usually that lead on to a hammering but at least under Smith there is resolve to dig in within the team when things aren't going so well instead of just giving up.

It certainly didn't help losing Sutcliffe and Scott in the 2nd half. As you say size and aggression has been a big issue for us since even before the start of the season further compounded by not replacing Evans and also Griffins subsequent ban and release.

It was weird as you found a 10-15 minute period in the first half when you scored twice which was the blueprint to play against Huddersfield, they aren’t a fast team or upwardly mobile team so keeping it alive with runners off shoulders and offloads work well, they have plenty of defenders not interested in doing the little things well.

Then you completely moved away from it and didn’t build any pressure what so ever.

Trueman - great assist but other than that thought he was dire. Satae looked like he was unplayable against cas and then utilised all wrong last night. Just felt a weird performance like it was a pre season try stuff and see, which isn’t that uncommon under a TS coaches team to be fair

Decent post, think it went wrong when Dywer went to 9, lost all structure.

Pack is still our problem, Halfbacks can't play behind a pack that doesn't lay the platform, no forward made more
metres than Trueman last night other than Cator.

And Dave unfortunately this is our problem, although the heart showed in almost all games by Fash, Lane, Cator cannot be questioned this trio of players while all playing together, will never trouble teams, especially in games which define your season, and without Griffin now as well. In a good side perhaps one of these lads gets a bench spot,

Last night during the warm up, Andre looked totally disinterested, then maybe I read to much into these things, the game was really poor with few coming out with credit, I’ve not watched it back yet, and probably won’t lol, but regarding the Truey incident which sort of did for us, was this a penalty as was awarded, or should it have been a scrum, as he knocked on, I’ll maybe fast forward to that incident as I missed it.

As an aside what on earth is up with JJB as his trousers seem to be giving him some discomfort, I suppose after some good performances we was due a poor one, let’s hope we can energise for Wakey, give a couple of young guns a debut maybe.

Definitely a penalty on Trueman, no idea what he was doing.

Absolutely stupid thing to do

Just knocked the ball out of their players hands.

No way he would get away with it.