Radford's staying. Let's see who he recruits.

Well he isn't pulling up trees so far :-
Tuson - pointless signing, is he really any better than Pitts,Hadleigh etc?
Talanoa - enthusiastic but average at best,
Carvell - good short term signing but leaves us with about 7 props
Colbon - absolutey awful
Rankin - looks good ( jury still out)

The fact that he was reportedly sniffing around Gale !!! says it all I suppose

But he isn't `faster' that's what makes him average.
I may be missing something but if we are to improve the side
the players coming in should be better than the ones going out.

I agree that Sinfield does these things well but the problem I have with this is that at FC we could have someone like Sinfield booting the ball up field and putting it dead to ease the pressure on us but we're just as likely to concede a penalty allowing the opposition to go back up the field putting us back under pressure. We make too many individual errors when we're under pressure. Hell, we even make them when we're not under pressure. There's nothing that a halfback or a playmaker can do about that.

the thing with improving a side is there's only so many better players out there, and all the other teams are after these better players too, its not something you can just do over night.

Best quote ever? If our winger was faster he wouldnt be average.....class!

Monaghan and Richards aren't exactly fast, but still excellent wingers.

Near impossible to replace Briscoe with a better player, but I would say that Talanoa is better value for money and more consistent than the Briscoe who played for Hull.

Talanoa isn't average, I would say he is a very good player, if he was faster I would say he would be an outstanding winger. We should certainly be looking at keeping him next season, if he this already hasn't been done already.

You have also forgotten Feka who was a Radford signing, although I reckon that Tony had more to do with his signing aswell as Talanoa.

Radford has certainly brought some good things to the squad IMO, the use of Westerman, Thomspon, faith in the young players like Shaul, Bowden and Hadley.

But he needs to start learning from his mistakes and must get his best team sorted.

My only quibble with Radford is his interviews. No coach should ever say that they don't know how to fix a problem, EVER!!! even if they don't know. They have to motivate a group of players, how can they do that if the players aren't sure if the guy leading them knows what he's doing.

Halfback is almost certainly our biggest issue, but I think there's too much more also wrong to think that getting the right one would solve almost all our ills. IMO, the biggest single problem on Sunday was ptb speed, as it has been for most of the last 5 years or so. We were playing against a set Wakefield defence, they were playing against a scrambling Hull one. That isn't about having more brains on the field (even though we definitely do lack them), it's about technique, enthusiasm, and determination.

This is something that I'd like to see addressed soon. I realise that injuries and suspensions can dictate a team selection but sometimes it does seem that he's tinkering for no real reason other than because he can.

Depends how you read stats, really. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as to say that they 'bossed' ours, I do think their forwards outplayed ours, and the stats pretty much back that up IMO. We might have made more metres in total, but that's because we had more possession. Looking at the 8 'proper' forwards for each side:

They averaged more metres per carry than us.
They made more offloads than us.
They made more tackles than us.
They completed a higher percentage of their tackles than us.
They made the same number of tackle busts as us, off less carries, therefore more than us as an average.
They made less errors than us.

The only area in which we came out better than them was penalties, which actually leans towards 1865's assertion about them piggy-backing us up the field.

And then there's what the stats don't show, and what was IMO the biggest difference between the 2 sides, ptb speed. Their forwards were far better than ours on both sides of this.

I disagree. Based upon this year's performances it's entirely fair/justified IMO. Carvell I agree with you, but for me that would have been at the expense of Tuson and putting Thompson in the back row.

You like me like stats, compare Whting Stats to Tuson and hadley and see who offers more in attack and defence?

Whiting has been messed around this year, he has been moved to and given low minutes off the bench in games.