He hasn't got much support left.

Come 10pm Friday it will be even less.

I can quite easily see him gone after Saints.

Maybe the women's team will coach Frawley and Miller how to kick and Friday won't be so bad

For the good of rugby league Smith needs to succeed with Leeds. If things don’t change Saints ,Warrington and Wigan will dominate the game this season and possibly several more seasons. I think Catalan are in decline so I have discounted them. Huddersfield and HKR are vastly overrated as proved by the poor performances at the weekend. Yet they both managed to beat us which shows how poor we are. The rest of the league are just making up the numbers. As for Hull the recent signings are a complete embarrassment, the downward spiral continues.

Those 3 (Wigan, Warrington, Saints) look well clear of the rest when they are on their game. That Wigan pack is huge. Very envious of it. We remain a long way off them imo.

Bet he's not. Leeds won't replace him mid year unless we're miles off the playoffs.

No result should be a foregone conclusion but hope really is hanging by a thread these days.

Spot on, it’s not rocket science (hate that expression) you build a team around a big powerful and mobile pack. We have under Smith failed to do that.

If I hadnt been so daft with my Gig booking I'dve been on the terraces Friday at Saints.

Not that I think we'll win but just to show weve still got some fight left in us.

I'll have to find somewhere in Liverpool to watch on the telly.

What's annoying about seeing Wigan's pack is that we've needed to beef ours up since 2015 and EVERYBODY could see it.

We used to pretty much only have Oledski who was any good at all, Holroyd was starting to break through but we did add Sangare and Lisone who are much physically bigger than we'd had for a while.

Unfortunately we didn't get that one additional big thing. Holroyd then has been injured yet again/not fully fit and without much pre-season, and Hudson is a project (also re-injured). Our academy prospects seem a couple of years off to me still.

Beyond our big men we are straight into back rowers and we drop off significantly - made worse because our back rowers themselves aren't huge.

You're right with the backrowers, as it's a double edged sword. And with the props, it again shows the madness of letting Walters go and replacing him with Goudemand.

Something for me that I think is a further error is trying to turn Sangare into a starting player, who plays decent minutes. I just don't think that's how to get the best out of him. I think he's best as an impact player of the bench for no more than 20 mins a game. He seemed to have a lot more potential doing that when he first started with us.

Its not just size, although that's important. We have a rotation of props who don't bend the line with the ball and are not exactly aggressive in defence. Only Lisone shows any ability to barrel through the defence, and he is a bit of a flat track bully - looks awesome against a tiring defence going backwards but otherwise easily stopped. Compare our yardage to Wigan, Sts etc and its really poor, even when we had pretty much all of our props fit, and we don't even get quick PTBs to make up for it. A lot of our problems stem from our lack of threat right up the middle.

In other words we are in a complete shambles. Two years waiting for academy players? It’s a big step up from academy to first grade football . Majority don’t make the grade.

https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... y-the-ball Some interesting analysis here, particularly the clip at the bottom where they discuss the Leeds defence.

https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... y-the-ball Some interesting analysis here, particularly the clip at the bottom where they discuss the Leeds defence.

Nothing we dont already know unfortunately.

Looks great when it comes off, looks amateurish when it doesnt.

Almost dead last in all the metrics that count according to Sky before Catalans

completion rate - 75.7% - 12th
territory - 44.8% - 12th
errors - 107 - 12th
possesion - 49.3% - 9th

Looking at those stats I am surprised Smith is still in a job. I just hope he is not allowed to sign any players. He has already done enough damage. Another wasted season.

Those stats really are awful, and go a long way to explaining our generally dire performances.

After Sts we'll likely be 6-6, with Cas, Hull, Leigh and London to follow. In terms of results the Leigh match is the one that matters, as Cas, Hull and London are awful teams. Games against them should be looked at the same way as bye rounds in the NRL. Beating them means very little. We haven't beaten anyone apart from those three since March 8th - also Leigh. If we win the next four games we'll look OK on paper with 10 wins and 6 losses, but after that its really hard to see our next win unless we improve dramatically.

That's why we have to start turning in better performances. Otherwise we'll have a mid-season bounce playing easybeats followed by inevitable decline as we get turned over by teams that do the basics, let alone the likes of Wigan. We're getting towards halfway through the season and we're getting worse, not better.

I keep hoping Smith will turn things around, but unless he fixes the basics we've no chance. Like him or not, you can't argue with Wilkin's comments about our defence.

Those are four different stats but it's all about errors and penalties one way or another.

One way or another it’s abject failure.

I agree with what you are saying Exeter, unless we can start to hold on to the ball more, we will continue to be bottom ranked in most if not all of those areas. This is my biggest frustration, why do we continue to play a brand of rugby that we are not capable of executing successfully? Some of the errors are simple player should catch it / not drop it, but some are most definitely because of how we approach the game culturally and philosophically. It needs to change.

We play gimmicky rugby. We reject the conventional wisdom that actually wins trophies for short-cuts and gimmicks. We'll sneak a good result here and there, but there's zero foundation to actually build on and start competing at the top in the long-term. We require too much luck to sustain ourselves.

I don't think it's all about the style of play the team have adopted. A lot of the errors are simply dumb plays or individuals trying to offload inappropriately or score off every set.

Has the more expansive style been attempted fully since the second Saints game? Maybe Wire? Against London we played relatively controlled and disciplined. And we've not really had the strike in the backs to attempt it more recently. But we're still making error on error.

Largely agree it's more than just the style of play, this is where I think culture comes into it. We "allow" those mistakes to happen. Players don't seem to be held accountable, it's the same loop. Mistake, finger in the air for 1 minute of extra effort to hold the opposition out (even though I don't see that we put in extra effort then), get the ball back, make a mistake, repeat.

We both agree we have to break the cycle to make any sustainable improvements.

Just Go please

He's a clown. Unfortunately, when he does eventually get sacked, GH will pick his replacement, who has proven time and time again he is finished when it comes to building a successful squad + coach. The blind leading the blind.