... and there lays our problem

Hill is a shadow of the man he was 7 or 8 years ago (obviously time catches up with people)

Cooper is a bumped up second row (and like Hill, getting no younger)

Likewise Philbin (but has youth)

Akauola runs hard, 5 or 6 times a game. A slight improvement on Danny Lima, but spends most of his time not on the pitch.



These 4, as good as they are, are why we STILL miles away from lifting the SL.



Add to this, behind these four, the blandness of Hughes and the non effectiveness of Clark, and Currie is still a shadow of the player he was, despite playing a full year, with little injury issues., our pack is beginning to scare me. Don't get me wrong, Hill and Cooper remain top quality SL players, and we have a shining light in Clarke, but or pack is too small, and getting no better.



Packs lay the foundations for halves to provide the back 5, try scoring opportunities. Yes, we have a better pack than most, but it's not good enough to get the October prize.



Sorry.

The inside of my eye lids, for me.

If we miss out on a top line prop, after going to press weeks ago about our intentions to bring at least one in, someone needs to be held accountable. It was clear last season, and had been for years, that the front row needs some investment.



Recruitment for a number of years has been poor, often pinning our hopes on one big name halfback and ignoring the fact that we have a deficiency in the middle (Sandow, Roberts, Austin),



I just hope this isn’t history repeating itself and people are hiding behind Widdop and calling the recruitment campaign a success. It’s not, and a halfback won’t cure our problem

When Warrington FINALLY act, we'll end up with the fat girl who looks after her better looking mates handbags, while they're dancing.



We'll then discover, she's got breath straight from Satan's aris, and the personality of a traffic warden.



Then we take Uncle Rico's advice.

Kebab

Cab

and ponder the early hours away, wondering if we're ever going to meet Miss Wonderful

Don't matter who we have as prop and let's be honest we've had mozza Mona's carvell as front row with hill and woody as back up..still not good enough to get over the jinx of winning the end of season comp....next season won't be any different. Either Wigan saints or Leeds will be our so called champs and the year after and year after and so on....

Trouble is Karl cites "we need to manage within the cap" as an excuse. But this is no excuse at all. This is the challenge to extract maximum value for the spend and I am afraid we do not do this. Exhibit A - Clark. Also whilst we have almost zero youth progression into decent work-a-day SL pro's we always need to be buying in players which invariably cost more than home grown.

Whilst I am at it what is the point in spending big on former international class wingers when they don't get the ball in attacking situations.



Price's 5 drives and kick and hope opposition make mistakes may work (albeit dull) if we had an imperious pack and we have superb completion and very low error rate. We have none of those.

The club invited journos to their marketing meeting last week. Looks like we are concentrating on Wolfie's next stunt over signing a couple of props.

The daft thing as well is that Prices's tactics are only effective with a large dominant pack. It's such a waste to have 2 such fine wingers in Lineham and Charnley if they're only used as bulldozers. This season will tell all for me with Widdop in our ranks. If we can't create running lines and attacking moves in the backs with our halfback combination, then serious questions need to be asked.

I'm hoping that Price will have learnt from last season and realize that one up rl is neither effective or entertaining; either of these should be a minimum expectation. I just hope that during the off-season Price is drilling our players with moves and finding an alternative way to play rather than that drivel we watched last year.

This is what I don't understand though... Last season from our first game right up until Magic Weekend, we were playing a pack that weren't trying to batter their way down field. We saw a fairly small, slightly lightweight mobile pack going from left to right back to left again. Our props were ball players and offloaders. Our backrowers were hitting lines for the props in front of the halvs and winning quick PTB's. Everything was fast and direct.



Then after easter it all suddenly stopped. Why? The majority of us, I think, thought it was all about conservation and trying not to blow ourselves out before the 'business end of the season'. Then it was because we had lost Ratch, our 3rd Pivot. Then it was because we had lost Blake.



Ultimitely though at the end of the season we had the same team that was playing classy rugby at the start of the season and we were still playing 5 drives and boot it. Why? Price needs to be held accountable for our tactics and the way we finished the season off.

i've said it before, it all goes back to the saints game, we hit a brick wall, then struggled to recover afterwards.

Yes but why go away from what was working? We won games the first way, lost to Saints. Change of tactic after one loss, drastic but fair enough... lost 6 on the bounce playing a certain way, no change. Why?!?

It was funny once, now it’s boring.