The Lucky Black Cat wrote:
1. Marshall is a good coach, but has alot to learn especially at this level. However I feel he is the right man for the job and is thinking long term rather than short term. It makes me sick how fickle a number of people are. Every coach we have calls for he is clueless and we are rubbish etc etc. Who else shall we get as coach? Nobody that we can either afford or has the passion and understanding of Marshall. Maybe we can give the guy a bit of a break, instead of constantly over expecting and then moaning! Its rare you can get instant success and we need to build to get where we want to be. Sometimes we will go back-like much f this season. But maybe the team needs this to go forward and see and learn that rather than last year.
2. Probably we need understand that we are not as big or as good as we think we are as a team or club. We have little money and we have no money man. We have a fan base just over 1000 or so. The team itself has been at a similar level to Batley and Featherstone for the past 5 years. We are no bigger or better than either of them. Batley are no lesser club than us as some comments have been made. Last years finish probably has seen us think we are better than what we are. Top 4 was always going to be tough and we are still in it. We got extra money, but wisely in my opinion stayed Part time. The club has wasted money before pretending we are something we are not. This time the club is rightly looking long term and not using DRs- what most if not all want. The results of the long term strategy will be seen in a few years time, not now. The quality and quantity to go FT is not there- look at Sheffields struggles!
3.Personally I am not a fan of this rotation system. I understand players do suffer from tiredness and injury etc. However we need to have a constant team that knows what the others do and what the weakness/strengths are. I think we are struggling with confidence. I feel some players are not good enough and others have maybe not really been great signings for whatever reason.. I feel the team has got caught up in the hype of last year and is trying too hard to get it back. I feel the players/team are looking for gamebreakers and over doing things and forgetting the basics in both defence and attack. Its a fine line at times between getting it right and getting it wrong. I feel the team needs to go back to playing basic rugby and cut the silly offloads and mistakes out and build a platform in attack. I think we are wasting too much energy in defence, because we are making a number of silly errors in attack. If we learn to control the ball in attack and put better kicks in, then it helps us in defence. Control and stability needs to return in the games if we are to improve in any great measure.
I agree we have to trust Richard but do share concerns about him chopping and changing the team every week as we do look disjointed.
I don't agree about Batley as whilst they are a well run club which is all down to their chairman, support and ground wise take a look they are much smaller. But I do think we should stop treating them as 'good old Batley we like them' as they are now a major rival, they keep beating us and always seem to turn up when they play us yet they don't do against 'lesser' teams like Swinton and Oldham who they lost to, we are mugs as we go over in good numbers and put probably between £10 and £15k in their coffers with at least half the crowd and lots of money over the bar, they must be laughing their heads off at us lot. I bet us, Fev, Leigh and Bradford's away support pays a big chunk of their wages bill every year but you would say good luck to them at least they own their own ground!
I cannot understand why we keep making daft calls like yet another forward pass in our own half which cost us another try, why did we not do more bombs like Brambani which lead to 2 of their tries (a tactic I hate but it works)? Our kicking game is poor only one came off what has gone wrong with Gaz Moore he is well off his game?
Maybe it will all start to click as we have some good players but right now I cannot see it sadly.
