rugblyman wrote:
I cannot fault the attitude or commitment of the players yesterday, and I am confident there are members of our squad who will prove to be good players given time, however it is worrying that we are not competitive enough to gain promotion this season, after last season the club spoke of their determination get back to the championship which appears not to be the case. If we were owned and managed by others with less resource I would accept it and support the club with the same passion as in the days when we were propping up the leagues, but under the stewardship of our current owners I expect more.
I think these are very fair comments - supporter expectation is related to resources. The players' commitment yesterday was great. We couldn't have asked for more.
There are two issues to be considered:
1) If we do have genuine aspirations to become a Super League side why are we not able to put together a squad with sufficient class to be able to get out of this league? We have won once in six attempts against teams above us in the league this season.
2) Are the people in charge not able to identify players who are good enough to do that job or are the resources not really being made available?
In his post match comments to The Star, Gary Thornton is either trying to use yesterday's game to motivate his players for the forthcoming matches or he's kidding himself that we're better than we are. I hope it's the former because if it's the latter, I am very concerned.
Next season, Toronto will almost certainly be the Toulouse of the league. Assuming Rochdale go up with Toulouse, we've got to be better than Barrow, York, Keighley, Hunslet, Workington, and Whitehaven (if they are the two relegated clubs).
At the moment, we're probably ahead of Keighley and Hunslet. Next Sunday will tell us a little more about where we're at in relation to Keighley. Either way, the off-season recruitment has got to be very good if we are to have a realistic chance of going up next season.
I appreciate that winning any league isn't easy. There are 13 players doing their best to stop you every week. There is a lot of hard work and effort being put in by a lot of people. I don't want to belittle the hard work and effort that is being put in. I do appreciate what everyone does. My concern is that unless the top level decision-making is made better, we will continue to struggle. The longer this goes on, the more the fan base will drop. This worries me.