Quote: vikings 4 ever "Apparantly the club officials have already said at the curry evening at the Crown that it was McCormack who was selecting the players for this season. Until SM or somebody from the club comes out and says otherwise then surely we have to believe it.
Regardless of who signed the players, pre-season we all pretty much agreed that we had a squad capable of topping the table. Probably 1 or 2 props short, but I think we expected the class of certain players to shine through. Its criminal the way the prop situation was allowed to happen, but IMO the lack of cutting edge on the opponent line and the general lack of killer instinct has surprised everyone.
I'm not sure where the problem lies, the fact we're struggling thorugh games and halfbacks are not always producing their best form could be excused by the fact we don't have a very big pack. On the other hand, when we're camped on the opposition line and we still can't score because we look slow and predictable - this cannot be excused by the prop situation. So the only conclusion can be that a few of the players we expected to be top class have not produced the goods so far and this has not been helped by the fact that a) we've had tons of injuries and b) the forwards have struggled to get on top in games.
We seem to be getting players back form injury now and some players are starting to show what they can do, so we might not be that far away from being a decent side. If we can play ourselves into a bit of form and if we can bring in a decent prop (probably unlikely) we might just start to look like contenders.'"
To an extent you're right, about us not being able to turn pressure on the opposition line into points, being a problem. But we do tend to run, our often smaller forwards, in to bigger opposition forwards under the posts. They are dealt with easily and we are kept out. If we had a couple of big yard dogs running at them, we may actually break through once in a while, or make the opposition bring in an extra man from outside to deal with them, thus creating space out wide for our backs to exploit.
Have you also noticed that we haven't managed to tire out many, if any, of our part-time opponents? In fact many of them have finished the game looking as strong, if not stronger!
