No complaints the better team won your defence was top notch. I cannot see anything but a top 8 finish for yourselves our only chance is leap frogging Catalan for a top 8 place.

Aye, costly for us, wasn't it?

And to think only a couple of months ago some on here were calling Sneyd a waste of money

Another very good performance. After the first 20 minutes, our pack then just ripped through them for the rest of the game, magnificent. That must be the fastest ptb speed we've had for several years and look at how much difference it made to the easy metres we made and quality of rugby we could then play.

Great stuff, very good to watch atm.

Agreed, very happy with things atm. Feels like we're watching a rugby league team again.

Sneyd also has the ability to turn something out of nothing, at times it won't work, but when it does it great to watch.

Yep, an excitement factor. The chances of things coming off will be vastly helped by us now having taken the shackles off in attack. Creates much more space and defensive confusion/opportunities to exploit.

The way I have read and heard various interviews and reports, the attacking shackles have been taken off due to Radders being satisfied that the defence is sound. We have turned into a very hard team to break down and we are now also starting to score points more freely.

Dare I say, another huuugggggggeeeeeeeeee game next week (seems to be every week), tough place to go but this time maybe we have momentum and confidence on our side......

With the win against Rovers and Widnes, I think the pressure is slightly off us for the next two games.

Not sure I understand that, we've had one of SL's better defences pretty much as long as Radford has been on the coaching staff, especially our goal-line defence. He sorted that a long time ago, so I don't see why it would take until a month or so ago to decide that we could now play more open rugby.

Maybe with Radford being pretty new to this coaching business I wonder if he was a bit naive & thought maybe a good defence alone would win us games.

We've had our first choice pack out (more or less) for a number of games in a row with our first choice halves playing behind them. We've not had to play three hookers for example. We started the season with a full team and played OK for a couple of games. The full team has returned and has now played some more games together. No doubt they are training together as well. That would be helping a bit.

Of course it will.

From several of your recent posts, there seems to be a general theme that you think the main reasons why we've improved are that we've got players back from injury and the halves are now gelling. Fair enough.

I don't happen to agree with you. That doesn't mean I don't think those things are a factor, nor insignificant. I think it's more to do with the change in approach, which is in turn allowing the halves to flourish. It's a chicken and egg question where it is essentially impossible to prove one is right over the other, but the reasons I personally think it's more about the system over the personnel are:

1. It wasn't a gradual change. IMO there was a clear change between the Hudds game and the Salford game in terms of how we tried to play. The team against Salford (particularly the pack) was weaker than that against Hudds, so it wasn't down to returning players. If the main change was down to returning personnel, I'd have expected steady improvement every time somebody came back, and if it was the halves, I would have expected to see steady improvement from them over the season, but we haven't. Pryce has been consistently very good throughout, and Sneyd seems to have gone from ordinary with an inconsistent kicking game to back to last year's standards in under a month.

2. We were also pants earlier in the season with almost a full side at times. Hinting at most of our problems being injury related is a fallacy IMO. Salford away, Leeds home, Wigan away, Cas away, Rovers home, were all games where we had maybe 1-2 pack players missing, but with what should be able deputies, but in most of those (Wigan arguably less so) we still produced very disappointing performances. We also had our first choice halves for all but the Rovers game. That amount of difference in personnel (to me at least) should not constitute so great a difference in performance standards as between then and now). Some difference, yes, but not as much as we've seen.

3. The awfulness of earlier this season was consistent with last year, regardless of personnel.

4. Even players that have played pretty much all season are now shining more, throughout the side.

I think it's very clear that we have fundamentally changed how we approach playing the game, and at the same time our performances have become much more entertaining to watch and we look a much better side who go out and take games, not hang in scrapping and nick them. It's a symbiotic relationship, but I'm more inclined to think that the style change has brought the best out in the players than that it's all just come together all at once because we have a near-fully fit side and the halfbacks know each other better. The improvement has been too drastic, and there is contradictive evidence for that.

Plus its really hot down there at the moment.If these temperatures extend next week we will be playing in 25 degrees