I noticed.

I said on Friday after the match that it wasn't our best performance but that it wasn't our worst performance either.

What people need to remember is that we was coming off the back of three straight defeats, the last of which was a hammering. I don't think we was ever going to go from being hammered one week to hammering a team ourselves the week after. I think the players will have been nervous not to make it four defeats in a row and decided on playing safety first rugby designed to get us the win. They delivered.

This is exactly what I said pre season. We've spent stupid amounts of money on the back row leaving our back line woefully short on quality.

I do sometimes wonder how the atmosphere in the stadium affects the players. The whole atmosphere on Friday was nervous and subdued from the start with audible chuntering and moaning all through the game and nervous was exactly the sort of game we had.
I'm in no way blaming the fans btw. Its something of a chicken and egg situation. A good atmosphere helps a good performance I feel but you need a good performance to get a good atmosphere, at the KC anyway.

It was caused by the staff/team from the previous week, I think everybody knew we would beat Wakefield but it was the manner the team set out to achieve this, I know they've worked on defence all week, I've said before wakeys plan is to frustrate & slow down the opposition, really poor plan but they've nothing else, the players seem to be lacking confidence maybe it's the narrow defeats & the embarrassing display at Widnes, they will grow in confidence it's still early in the season yet, so for me the 2 points each week is all that matters, I know they will be addressing a lot in training we will come good we have a very good squad with experience, we all have bad days at work.

Had similar thoughts about the atmosphere last year after hearing something about the players not enjoying playing at the KC. They do need the fans behind them to give them a boost to deliver a good performance but it has gotten to a point now where the only way the crowd will be fully behind them is by giving us a good performance. As you say, chicken and egg.

You forgot the middle 8s as well

6th atm because of your ability to drag other sides down to your level, the only thing your likely to get his another overdose of disappointment from your overpriced overpaid and over here bunch of misfits

I wouldn't waste your time on him Dave. He's just trolling.

Glad to see someone has some confidence in us! It's early days and certainly plenty of time to get things right.

In case anyone is interested, we are two points better off at round six this year than we have been in the past two seasons.

He'll be trolling on the Batley and Dewsbury board's next year

You are right, confidence is a massive factor and without it teams won't win.

It's so hard-fought to gain and seemingly so easy to lose. After the friendly and the two opening games, particularly after Catalans, confidence at Hull was oozing. It must've been at a higher level than we've seen for years. Everyone believed in them, the fans, themselves and they were even convincing the media and the pundits.

So just what exactly happened to that confidence in the two week gap between Cats and Cas?

Wasn't it Gentle who said about the gap between our Best and worst performances and trying to bring them a little closer . The Catalans / Widnes games suggest we still have that issue still to address .

Other teams do.

While I was happy to see us actually defend our line a few times it wasn't quite the reaction to the Widnes game that I was hoping for. We're a long way short of the form we showed in the first 2 games and I'm by no means confident of beating Rovers on Friday. And as for Wire on Monday - I'm frankly dreading it.