Its on our league pay for view.

Thanks Des, I’ll listen to Steady on radio, maybe he’ll have Jon Wells as his guest

We'll rest some against Salford the week after then.

It captures the imagination in the same way characters in a SAW movie are captured.

I’ve not actually seen those films, so hopefully that metaphor makes some sort of sense.

We’ve been bad at rugby for long enough that it has become hard for me to imagine anything good happening, and there’s no point imagining the other. Even if we were to win, I’d worry that we’d expended part of our (likely tiny) ration of good performances in a game that doesn’t offer any league points.

Change of some sort will come one day. Until then though, it’s going to take a lot more than a game against Castleford in a early round of the cup to whet my appetite.

Lol you never know, it may just be your unchained melody game, win this your in the last eight,

I read somewhere it was 1986 since you last played Cas in the cup, On paper Cas are favourites, but it can be a moody game rugby league, and with Powell leaving, and Wells resignation, you just never know.

Its a shame fans aren’t allowed back yet, as I imagine Cas would not relish this contest,

You couldn't help it could you? You had to mention it, you wouldn't let it lie. Jamie "Bloody" Sandy.

We're incapable of playing rugby league for a full eighty minutes so we've got little to no chance.

No doubt come Friday, Mental Girlfriend Syndrome will kick in and then the belief kills you.

It was an innocent association Sandro honestly,

I was actually at this final, and remembering a drunken rhyme made up on the way back home on train, by our group, “ he shot, he missed, he must be fxxxxxg pxxxxd Dorothy Dorothy” was sang with great gusto.

Knock Cas out, hopefully we win, then the draw gets even more interesting.

I was also at this final, to say the young Sandro was devastated is a slight understatement, a family weekend away truly ruined!

My Dad took me to the 1985 final which will be a memory I'll always hold, I can remember one poor lass on our Pearson's coach trip crying more or less all the way home!

I’ve got a lot of respect for and faith in Tony Smith. However, I do find it very hard to feel anything better than ambivalence about the patience mantra. https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/r ... al-5272037 Cas are cited as an example of a gradual turnaround but went from 12th and 20 points in 2013 to 4th and 36 points in 2014. We’ve had strategies that stressed patience for the best part of a decade, excepting the couple of seasons when we had to show some urgency and actually achieved our on-field goals (‘17 and ‘1icon_cool.gif. I appreciate the need for hard work and know that there are no easy answers. But I think that communication based around a real and immediate drive for improvement would help change some of those perceptions he talks about. ‘Patience’, just like the sodding 5-year plan, feels now too much like a passive acceptance of crap and low expectations. Taken too far patience just buys the need for ever greater patience. There’s no karmic pay-off (not that I think TS thinks there is, he’s not daft).

I’ve got a lot of respect for and faith in Tony Smith. However, I do find it very hard to feel anything better than ambivalence about the patience mantra. https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/r ... al-5272037 Cas are cited as an example of a gradual turnaround but went from 12th and 20 points in 2013 to 4th and 36 points in 2014. We’ve had strategies that stressed patience for the best part of a decade, excepting the couple of seasons when we had to show some urgency and actually achieved our on-field goals (‘17 and ‘1icon_cool.gif. I appreciate the need for hard work and know that there are no easy answers. But I think that communication based around a real and immediate drive for improvement would help change some of those perceptions he talks about. ‘Patience’, just like the sodding 5-year plan, feels now too much like a passive acceptance of crap and low expectations. Taken too far patience just buys the need for ever greater patience. There’s no karmic pay-off (not that I think TS thinks there is, he’s not daft).

It’s more what he’s saying than what he’s done. I believe/hope that he is trying to solve our problems with utmost urgency. I worry that quotes like those in the article linked send the opposite message and that might hinder those efforts.

For me, he gets a pass for last season. The career-ending and life-changing injury to Mose Masoe and Mitch Garbutt’s struggles to get on the pitch meant an otherwise merely weak squad became completely uncompetitive. There was something wrong with the squad that lost to London twice and did the usual in golden point against Salford in 2019 - the echoes of 2016, in the ways we would find a way to lose were worrying. So all change for 2020, bin-off Joel Tomkins et al. and sign some hungry youngsters and projects from the Championship. I’m going to try very hard to avoid the x wins from y wins argument, including last year’s results. We do need to improve a bit from that very low base though.

Hopefully Takairangi, Vete and Sims will offer good value over the course of the season.

Nobody is asking for Rome in a day. I don’t think anybody is even asking for Rome. We aren’t a rich club. But neither are Cas, afaik, and we’ve a 14 point start with the bookies tonight.

Classic MGS.