I know. But it's missing the point to say we can be more consistent and just narrow the margin of defeat in those games. Consistency, by its very nature, has to apply to all the performances. So if we play consistently better, yes, we'll narrow the margin of defeat in certain games, but we'll also move from narrow defeat to winning in others.



Absolutely. Taking Wembley and last week aside, some of our worst performances came in defeats to Cas, Wakey and Bradford. All games we could/should have won, if we'd played to anything like our potential.



I'd consider it highly unlikely since the team in 7th usually has around 28 points and has never had more than 29 (once) since we went to a 14 team division.



But as I keep trying to point out, you can't improve performances and still win fewer games. It doesn't work like that. If we improve our attack and still lose more games, then our defence must be poorer. If the overall standard of performance improves, we will, by definition, win more games.

I'm failing to see how an improvement in performances overall wouldn't improve our final standing?

Okay, okay I give up! What I want to see is that gap between our best performance and worst performance narrowed. And I consider our worst performances to be games that we don't contest, not the games we lose narrowly. The narrow defeats I find frustrating but games such as Widnes away and last week are just humiliating in my eyes.

If we can cut out those performances then I will consider that acceptable and a sign of improvement.

We were absolutely awful against Wakefield and Cas (to name but two). The reason we only lost narrowly is because we were playing Wakefield and Cas, not because our performance was any better.

Are you just going to argue with everything I say?

Only the bits that are wrong. So, yes.

Me too. Nearly all of Pearson's talk was about leading the team out at Wembley. Whatever else went on, Gentle delivered that.

Same here. Rugby league isn't like football where you can pick up plenty of results you don't deserve. Generally the best team on the day wins, so if we improve our week to week performances we should pick up more points, so unless we see a massive swing in the share of points in SL we should at least maintain 6th but probably improve on that.

So you'd be happy if we closed that gap by the quality of our best performances getting lower?

How odd.

Remember you were gifted 2 points at magic weekend, and 2 points against Wigan under 19's at the end of the season!!!

London away, wakey at home, cas and Bradford away. Marginal improvement in these games would have meant 7 more points this season, that with a mediocre coach and plenty of injury disruptions.

Do you reckon? We were, perhaps, a little fortunate to get 2 points instead of 1 at Etihad but had just scored 3 tries in less than 10 minutes so there was every chance we would have scored again plus I reckon the wigan team which turned out that night performed way above what the cup winning team would have done on the same day

Really we did, wish the rovers fans would have mentioned it. You are right though, you did gift us the 2 points in that game and the craven park game with your poor defence.

I don't think he will be judged on league position alone. Style of play and consistency are just as important. If Radford can keep the defence strong and improve the attack whilst bringing through youngsters and finishing in the top 8 that will be enough for next season.

Good recruitment next off season and challenge in Radford's second year.

Some fans have suggested targets so that it's fair on Gentle. AP doesn't have to be fair to Gentle, he owes him nothing. AP owns the club and he can do what he wants.

A pertinent point.