Quote: Chris71 "Agree with the above.
Whilst injuries have played a major part in the failure of this season it can not be ignored that even before the injuries mounted we didn't look great and struggled from the start of the season with poor error riddled performances.
I can't think of any game this season apart from maybe the cup game against St's were we have played for the full 80 mins.
Individually and collectively performances have simply not been good enough irrespective of the injuries. The handling and basic skill set on display this season and level of discipline has been poor and nothing seems to have improved in these areas all season.
Its been evident for a number of seasons we lack any sort of real attacking structures and that has shown this season that we rely heavily on maverick plays from Kelly and the boot of Sneyd as we simply can not break opposition defence down as we are so predictable. Defensively we have also been very poor on previous seasons with at times embarrassing attempts at tackling, we are all too often happy to stand and wait for the opposition rather than pushing up to meet them so we are losing the collision on a regular basis and not making the opposition fight to gain metres but simply giving them easy metres.
We seem to lack the ability to run angles, have any real support play or actually just simply run onto a ball with a bit of pace instead all too often we are pedestrian in both defence and attack.
Whilst Lee Radford should be applauded for winning two back to back Challenge Cups he also needs to take responsibility for the way this season has gone in terms of the total ineffectiveness of the game plans and general play in games.
I also think he needs to think himself lucky he has not been relieved of his duties and as such really needs to take a long hard look at his own performances as Head Coach and bring in much needed assistance in this dept and make changes.
As has been said Houghton has been poor by his usual standards this season and it doesn't help that he is flogged for 80mins every game and this seems to have finally caught up with him. Litten should be used more often to spell Houghton as his pace can be very useful against tiring defences.
In truth the performance by all involved in the team this season has fallen short of what should be expected and this has been masked to an extent by the injuries.
If things do not change going in to next season I can see the same happening again.'"
great post
