2016 wasn't mainly down to individuals, IMO. Obviously Campse's injuries and Kelly's issues didn't help, but it wasn't a hugely strong squad.

If players are simplistically rated out 10 for quality within super league, a strong team might have one top 9- or 10-rated star, a handful of 8s, plenty of 7s and 6s, and a few 5s making up the numbers/developing.

We didn't have enough 8s and 7s and had too many 6s and 5s instead. Being a 6 doesn't mean a player is soft or disinterested or deserving of blame or couldn't contribute to a successful team effort - it is an issue when he's surrounded by almost nothing but other 6s and 5s though. Chuck in a cack pre-season and we were in trouble from the get-go.

All that said, we went down by the finest of margins, and a lot of those SL 6-rated players will be 8-rated in the championship and maybe 6.5-rated against the weaker SL teams if/when we play in the middle 8s.

I'd say the demise started well before 2016. Relegation has been on the cards for a few years.

It's simply down to bad recruitment of both players and coaches and bad luck with injuries. Although that could be classed as bad recruitment.

We had definitely started to stagnate as a club before 2016 but to say that relegation has been on the cards for a few years is garbage. Relegation wasn't reintroduced until the 2015 season. We ended the middle 8s 7 from 7 so relegation was never a serious possibility. Prior to that I think the last year of relegation was 2009. We finished 4th that season.

To put our demise simply down bad recruitment is massively over simplistic and I would expect that the club will have undertaken a far more forensic investigation.

Apart from that your post was pretty accurate.

Almost non existant pre season 2016 (as it was for Leeds because of their floods) had a bigger impact than we realise.

Tilse was always a poor replacement for Weyman, Thornley looked disinterested and the rest were at times too complacent or paniced when close to the try line and therefore too often took bad options. All fine margins yes, but caving in to Hull whilst 20 up is a fine example of lack of will power or game management from last season.

My statement earlier remains, this season we need to show Patience, Power and Ruthlessness on the field. At times last season we had Power for certain periods but the other two were generally AWOL in 2016.

Power is obvious, Patience covers ball control and game management as well as stopping the panic style play and Ruthlessness to punish the oppositions mistakes and exploit their weaknesses. It isn't pretty, but that has to be the ploy to get us promoted.

You seem completely obsessed by Tilse. People obviously see him in different ways. You did not rate him, I accept that. I think we know your opinion by now.

I think if we are looking at when the demise of the team started we have to go back to when Michael Dobson left.
For 2 seasons before he had organised the team and game management singlehanded.
We had some good results in 2015 which cumulated with our Wembley apparance but never really replaced him.
Others played their part in our problems, Kelly, Larroyer, Josh Hodgson leaving (he deserved his Aussie venture) Weymans retirement etc but Dobbo is the main one we have never replaced.

In my opinion the decline started as soon as Morgan left his post. Sandercock was an utterly $hiote appointment along with the majority of his signings.
On top of that it didn't help with a number of in-season retirements that seemed to blight us every year. Cretins like Sean Gleeson and his lack of respect for anything about our club added to it as well.

Dobbo's last season with us wasn't great. He becaome too predictable. Morgs will forever be a great coach in my mind but even he started to run out of ideas. However, I've stated before that I think we're still paying the price for how Sandercock (mis)shaped the squad. His negativity also rubbed off too much on the east stand faithful as well. We stopped supporting and started shouting foul more. That at least us nearly gone.

Enough with the negativity anyway. A new season is 3 days away and we can consign last season to history. The best signing we've made in the last year? Sheens. Let's hope I don't regret posting that.

I think you will go up this season, but all in all I think at best you are a Yo-Yo club with possibly the occasional top 4 and challenge cup as a target. Doubt you will ever win or get to the grand final.
Fc have more of a chance, but we blew that golden chance last year, if we don't do it this year I think we could be in for a few more years of 6-8, poss middle 8's unless our recruitment stacks up - which in fairness it has in recent times.

Enough with the negativity anyway. A new season is 3 days away and we can consign last season to history. The best signing we've made in the last year? Sheens. Let's hope I don't regret posting that.'"

for the size of your club in income generated and salary cap you are the big underachievers in super league bottom half of superleague is only what we expect

Yeah, no argument there.

The thing with SL is that it is noticeably getting worse year on year. Any team in there with a good coaching appointment and a bit of luck can go to the Grand Final and even win it. Cas who I'd say are on a par with us in terms of resources etc will have a good go at a top 2 place and it wouldn't be that great a surprise if they won it.

Last year highlighted the fact, Hull went from favourites to bin the coach first to having a great season (apart from the end of season implode). Wigan were awful for most of the year and won the thing.

If we can get promoted (which will be hard) then I don't see any reason we couldn't go on to challenge mid and upwards in a similar manner to Cas.

exactly very fine margins as seen in last years middle 8s

Indeed, you could certainly do that, it's a fair point well made