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Quote: carl_spackler "Some strange claims in there, and some bending of the truth.

The squad was believed to be good enough for top 6 at the start of the season, but then they realised it wasn't good enough. It certainly should be better than 12th. If you and the coaches honestly thought it should be top 6 and now think 12th is not a major underachievement you need to consider whether you should be involved in the sport.

The stuff about needing a local coach to understand how to bring youngsters through and it not being possible with an Australian is just so out there it's hard to comprehend how he thinks people will swallow it. As others have already mentioned, it just doesn't stack up with how many young kids Gentle played, either. Plus, I personally think that when Gentle was in charge the youngsters coming in looked more at ease than those who have come in this year (possibly Lancaster apart). I found myself wondering whether he was knowingly talking baloney as an excuse, genuine believed it under his own steam, or has simply swallowed it wholesale from somebody creating themselves a job opportunity.

Also, the comment about every time we had an injury he was asked for a loan instead of playing youngsters. How many loan players did we have in the last 2 years? I can think of Russell (we had no other fullback in the squad IIRC), and Foster. Any others? Also, this year we might not have brought in loans to cover injuries, but we did hand out full contracts to both Carvell and Colbon to cover injuries. Was that any better?

Then there was a claim about the unacceptable form last year. The 5 game losing run he claimed - didn't entirely happen, we won a cup game during it. We also only lost a couple of those 5 by 2 points or less, and a couple of others by 6 and 7 points. Have a look at this year's fixture list, Adam, you might see a 4 game losing streak already, where the closest we got was 7 points, and in a couple of weeks I think you might even find this to be the middle of a 5 game losing streak where the best we can manage is a 6 point gap. I suppose that's all Gentle & McRae's fault still though, eh?

Don't entirely agree about Radford's signings being better so far, either. Jury's still got to be out on that one. A similar mixed bag this season and we'll have to wait and see next year.

Gentle not being brave enough to take on the cap issues is a tough one. From the outside we can't know exactly what that means, but if it's about freezing players out until they leave then it could just as easily be a disagreement over whether or not it's right to do that. Our behaviour to some players this year has been questionable to say the least.

Not sure what he meant by 11 in 17 at Wigan. If he meant from the youth system it was only 9. Also, 6 of those had already played first team before this season, so it's still a bit flexible with the truth to hint at this being down to the current setup and a sign of the future with the current coaching team.

I also wish he'd stop (or at least tone down) going on about the refereeing now. He makes it sound like better refereeing would have us in the playoffs and it just smacks of 'they're out to get us, it's not our fault' excuses.

He has some valid points, but trying to attribute all of the problems to the previous regime and paint them as the ultimate villains of the piece just doesn't wash IMO.

It does at least seem that he's aware of fans possibly (probably?) voting with their feet next season.'"