expectations of a club

Quote: Staffs FC "One of the best posts on here for ages amongst a mountain of drivel. The whole '5 drives and a kick' garbage is just that. Hull's improvement last year was in the main down to better defence - a facet of the game that alarmingly has not reached the same level this season. We conceded fewer points last year and as a result were able to win a number of close games - all bar one at home was it ? However as MMJ says the poor kicking game has massively hampered us - preventing enough decent field position. With that lack of field position through poor kicking it's even more critical that errors are kept out of the play - something else that has been way too prevalent this year.

The two improvements we need to make IMO are to defend with more speed/structure and aggression - making it much harder for the opposition to progress. This should be possible with the current playing staff and we are way off where we were last year - which even then wasn't as good as it could have been. It's the failure in this area that makes me seriously question whether our players, with one or two (Australian) exceptions are anywhere near fit enough. The second improvement is to completely replace our kicking game with one of SL standard, This is a recruitment issue which should have been addressed as we don't have personnel with the necessary skill to achieve this consistently (or ever in fact).

People like to talk about the attacking flair of Wigan. For much of the Wigan Saints game at Cardiff Wigan drove the ball one out away from their own territory. Low risk mistake free football in their own half. Then on the back of a good kick chase they would pressure an error. In the opposition half they are more expansive but not at the expense of doing the hard yards to get them into an attacking position. All the top teams do this - and it's based upon a strong high work ethic defence and keeping things tight until field position allows otherwise. As MMJ says we're never in these positions often enough.

With the exception of Berrigan (obviously a quality player) this team reached 6th last year and should be able to go higher. But MMJ is right - it's a mastery of the basics that is needed - and that means aggressive defence and fewer handling errors and penalties. If/when Agar leaves us he will go because of failures to achieve in these areas - not because of the '5 drives and a kick' that many of the top teams base their basic game around - they just do it efficiently and well.'"

Whilst I'd agree to a point, it's blindingly obvious that most teams will play five drives and a kick in their own half. I think the whole 'five drives and a kick' mantra on here has become a convenient metaphor for our lack of decent attacking play no matter what our field position. Our lack of dummy runners, poor backing up and overall lack of organisation (not to mention the incredibly poor forward rotation adversely affecting our go forward) conspire to mean that we generally produce lacklustre rugby. You can put a certain amount of this down to lack of halfbacks, of course, but it's by no means the sole cause.