Quote ="nottinghamtiger"At the beginning of the season, in our friendlies, many fans commented on how much fitter and better conditioned opposition players seemed to be compared to us. As this was pre-season, I generally accepted that this would improve.
However, it is glaringly obvious to everyone that the fitness levels of our players are lower than that of other teams in Super League. Firstly, the number of tries we concede in the final ten minutes of the first half and again in the final 20mins of the second half is unbelievable. This is due to poor fitness.
Secondly, the number of penalties we concede and errors we make in the same time periods are as a result of poor fitness. Our penalties are mainly for laying-on late in the tackle-count as we are not fit enough to dominate the tackle and get up in time. Our defence is run ragged as we take longer than other teams to retreat the 10 metres and set the line and are often still retreating when the ball is played, putting us onto the back foot (and costing us penalties for offside).
We have some good players, but they cannot perform to their full ability when unfit. Players who have signed from other clubs, particularly forwards, make less metres, miss more tackles, concede more penalties and make more errors per game than they did at their previous clubs. Likewise, players who leave and move to other clubs improve in these areas. One can only assume that this is a result of the lower fitness levels accepted at our club.
This issue needs dealing with if we are to improve our on-field performances. Our levels of fitness are simply not good enough to win many games at Super League level (or even beat a decent lower-division team come to think of it).'"
The thing that makes it worse for me is that Wigan had a really tough CC match against Leeds last week and we had the week off yet we were the ones who tired first. Not good enough.
If the same thing happens on Tuesday when we play Catalan, I will be disgusted. On Saturday we have 1 player in the England team, Catalan have 13 in the French sqaud. Now Bosc is injured as well, we should be looking to beat them by 20+. Who wants to bet that they actually outscore us in the last 20 mins.
