we lost to both Hull KR and Salford earlier in the year, and beat both within the last four games

And I commented on Performance not Result, some don't understand the difference, but there is. That is what makes that comment irrelevant. Both Hull KR and Salford are much worse than they were earlier in the season.

What is discussed and what is identified, has zero relevance. What is clear is what is produced on the pitch, and you only have to watch to see that. The fact the same problems happen in each and every match. Are you really suggesting the players are just ignoring the coach each and every week despite him identifying those problems allegedly? like I said, over a short period you can see the argument, but over 28 rounds it becomes inexcusable.

Fortunately you get points for results and not for the arbitrary subjective opinions on performance of fans on a messageboard

What is discussed and identified is the only thing which will affect us going forward. What has happened is what is irrelevant.

And i remain unconvinced that outside of vague generalities the same problems happen in each and every match.(outside of last tackle options which are a personel rather than tactical issues)

They wouldn't have been the same scorelines at all. You honestly think the defence is as bad now as it was in the first half of the season when we use to crumble like an old mans hip a the first whiff of danger.

As others have said and as i previously said cant see McD going anywhere. Hes an ex-marine so he wont quit and he has GHs trust so I cant see him going anywhere yet.

Cas Wire & ST's just to pick 3 would destroy what we've served up imo esp the London away debacle & most others will if that's a preview of what's to come under the current regime.

Do you really think we were putting our all into that match? We were doing that in 1st gear, Watkins being tackled over the line when he thought he scored summed it up. If we put a number of the performances we displayed in the Middle 8's when playing away to Hull several weeks ago we wouldn't have won there....but as often happens in sport teams do raise their performance for the bigger games. Some weird idea that last weeks performance would be entirely identical if we playing Wigan or Saints.

I don't care what was being discussed off the field and by whom. What I do care about is the laughable defence in way too many games, combined with an awful unstructured attack. I would have thought that any side struggling on attack would concentrate on simple sets and kicking for position. I don't recall seeing much of that controlled rugby. In attack if things are stuttering you either go for a game based on offloads and hope to create something in broken play, or go the other way and just go through rigidly planned moves every set. As far as I can tell in a lot of games we looked to have literally no idea what we were even trying to do, never mind executing whatever the 'plan' was.

All of that is down to coaching and players in poor form.

Add to that the amount of sets we've been caught in position on the last tackle or a poorly executed kick.

As i have said before, in general our defence hasnt been that bad, our attack has had problems, probably more than is acceptable but is it down to a 19 year old halfback playing more games than he could have expected? Losing our MoS fullback to injury and then completely and moving a new player there? Having only 1 player in our first choice back line play 20+games doesnt really help anyone play any sort of planned rugby, having your only experienced half in and out of the side isnt going to help.

With the players we had out there at times, i'm not surprised we didnt know what we were doing

All have what you have said there is true. And shows where I think Mac went massively wrong, with players in and out of the squad, young halves etc as coach he should have looked to simplify our game plan, ensure we complete sets with a good kick and cut down on the champagne stuff that doesn't go to hand when fit and out of form.

Unfortunately it took most of the year for Mac and or the players to realise that. This in turn put us under a lot of pressure for most of the season.

But do we have the personnel to play that game? Who is taking on that long kicking game? For a long time, certainly in the early part of our season i would have said our problem wasnt that we were 'playing too much champagne rugby' but that whilst we had no problem marching down the field but were struggling to get over the line because Lilley and Sutcliffe (who werent our first choice half pairing) arent adept at putting players through those holes on the line and simply dont have the consistent short and long kicking game needed to play that kind of grinding rugby.

A fair point on the skill set deficiency, which I think was exaggerated early on because we had Hardaker rather than a 3rd pivot type at fullback. They're were times though where we tried to play too much rugby (offloads to floor etc) and to me it doesn't really matter if the skillset for a long kicking game, a crap kick with a good chase is better than turning it over on the last with regularity.

We also waste a potentially lethal last tackle option of kicking to Hall, but that's nothing new.

Utter nonsense that our defence was OK most of the year. Of the first 20 games I'd say Widnes (A), Cats (A), KR (H), Sts (A), Hudds x 2 (A), Cas (H) Wigan (MM), and Wire (A) were awful. That's almost half of our first 20 games. On top of that any viewing of tries against us across most of the season shows amateurish attempts. The problems with the defence were nothing to do with fatigue or personnel - it was jagged defensive lines, zero line speed and pathetic individual efforts including shirt grabbing right on our own line.

I think defence was the biggest issue. Our defence was all over the place. The players looked knackered after about 15 mins and we were barely hanging on in defence in some games.

There was little line speed and little bite in the tackle. There was also little to no control of the tackle with not enough players getting involved in the tackle to slow it down. Combine all that along with no hooker, no mobile backrower and some very big forwards then it's obvious as to how we were getting killed at the play the ball regularly.

Agree, there were definitely a couple of games early in the year where I thought we scored enough to win, but soft defense let us down. The Catalan game comes to mind.

I agree with everything Him has posted about the defence above, especially our inability to control the ruck. Which imo stemmed from having too many big immobile forwards in the middle of the park trying to make up for the lack of a Hooker.

We conceded only 99 points more than we did last season, we scored about 350 points fewer.

We conceded only 50 points more than St helens, we scored 170 fewer

we conceded 60 points LESS than Cas we scored 210 fewer

Smokey you can fire stats at us all day long but people know what they see, and what was on offer for a fair chunk of this season regards defence was drivel. I saw that with my own two eyes. I don't fancy getting into a 4 page debate with you that has no ending so will just leave it as my opinion. If you feel differently, then fair enough.

They can be wrong,

the facts speak for themselves, we defended well enough to put ourselves in a position to win. We didnt attack well enough to do so.

He can dress it up how he likes, but most on here know the real reasons.

The only fact that is clear is the the whole of the competition is scoring less points this year. Last year all of the top 7 in super league had scored more than 700 points. This year and it will finish that way, only four of them have scored that.

That is why across the board defences are conceeding less, although Smokey seems to think it is something good that we have conceeded 99 points more. Actually we average 3.5 ponits a game more, which in percentage terms is 16% which is a very noticable value.

I am sure tvoc could produce stats with history on the defence which would have far more meaning.

total number of points scored in 23rounds 2015 = 6493

total number of points scored in 23rounds in 2016 = 6463

difference in total number of points scored last year to this = 39 a 0.5% change 'across the board'

Percentage increase in number of points conceded = +16%

percentage decrease in number of points scored = -46%

av difference in points conceded = +3.5

av difference in points scored = -15.4

That might be what the stats line said but going purely on what I saw with my own eyes our defence was a complete shambles. As already mentioned the ruck, and some soft missed tackles especially in the middle. I think that if we did indeed only conceded a few more points per game is credit to our scrambling defence which was still pretty good.

We knew we were likely to struggle offensively this year, having lost two pivots and not really replaced them. However there was no reason for our defence to become the disorganised shambles it did, especially at times when it looked like an attitude/effort/fitness thing.

seems a little circular doesn't it?

Also, you have to remember, we were much poorer attacking, our kicking game was poor, we dropped a LOT of ball, all of these add up to defending more sets and defending them in worse positions.

The fact is, the defence is irrelevant to our major issues. Even if I ignore all the evidence and accept our defence was terrible, had we scored as many points as we did last year, that terrible defence would have given us the best points difference in the entire competition.