I agree, I have only witnessed about 3 good games from Longy, and 2 from Horney...however it appears that we are more organised with Longy on, and at least we pass the feckin ball to the centres

Didn't know we'd kicked so many drop goals.

You'd probably fallen asleep by then

Certainly had on Saturday. Not even sure what score it finished. Did we win?

You get a bonus point just for doing 5 drop outs a match

I didn't even realise wakey had scored again after I left until I speed watched it on SKY+ yesterday

You watched it again? Had you run out of rusty nails to hammer into your legs, or summat?

Thats exactly what i see, our only improvement seems to be in defence although at times our defence seems non existent this season. We have clearly improved from last season but i think its more of a case of winning the close games than anything else. I have not seen a drastic improvement in playing and yet again we look clueless in attack too much of the time.

The defensive improvement could be put down entirely to Fitz been on the park and his workrate. If that was the case it could be argued that we've not improved one bit other than Agar's masterstroke recruiting Fitz.

Considering his tackle count each game you might not be far wrong.

Have we improved or have other teams got worse / got more issues with injuries etc? ie Castleford, Catalans, Quinns and Leeds?

I think that a big part of this is our halfback situation yet again. Long and Horne have played too few games and rarely as a partnership, which means that we've been pretty much back to the situation of the last two seasons. No surprise then that we've been seeing similar issues with our attack. A better pack and Tansey at FB have given us a little extra which has been enough to win some games we would have lost in 2008 & 2009, but we won't see a major improvement until we can field a settled halfback partnership that doesn't consist of players from other positions drafted in out of desperation.

I agree with that Kosh but we all knew i t was a risk signing Long and Horne with his previous time out of the game was always going to be hard pressed to play a full season nevermind at a good standard. The fact we keep trying players in that position and failing is cause for concern when we have youngster who could probably do as good a job if not better.
Yes it is always hard to chuck youngsters in but with the experience around them and the experience they would gain from playing in some games it would be invaluable to the club in the future. Failing that bring in someone for a NL1 side, yes they wont be in the Long class but they will be playing in their position of choice rather than being asked to do something they are not accustomed to.

There was always a risk, but we had so much work to do on the squad that we had to focus on one area this season and IMO the right place to start was the pack. The availability of players will also have been a factor. It was a gamble but in some ways it has panned out OK in that we will be in the playoffs after two season stuck at the wrong end of the table. I realise that this isn't where we want to be, but I have a feeling that the club set a minimum target and we have hit it.

The real test will be what we do for next season and the one after. We have to address issues at halfback and centre/wing and we have to do that against a backdrop of everyone else being after the same players from a very limited pool of the required quality.

I don't know enough about our youngsters to know if any of them were a realistic option for halfback cover this season. I would agree about looking for someone from the Championship but again there are a limited number of candidates of the required quality and they are all much in demand. It's a difficult situation and it will take some creativity to address. I hope we have the ability to do that properly, because if we mess it up then we could easily be paying the price for years to come.

I know we had to replace the pack players that left last year but i don't think the pack was the biggest problem last year. The problem was the halfbacks, the forwards where doing the work on the pitch except they were being flogged by Agar and his mad 80 minute games for props idea.
We had the same problem last year that we do this year and that is scoring points, we had some cracks in defense but when a team is consistently on the back foot it makes those cracks seem far worse then they are.
Like i said we are doing better than last year but when you consider last year we vastly underperformed considering the players we had and this year i feel we are still underperforming to a large extent. With the turnaround in players i could accept it early in the season as people are finding their feet etc, but for me and a lot of supporters there really does not seem to be any corners turned.