It's funny, I read this post earlier and have a memory of some of those numbers being much lower....

I see your trickery Mr. Moderator with the power to edit posts without the "edited" suffix

I think we've been affected by McNally & Keyes (2 key positions) more than we can compensate for. Keyes was obviously our organiser, best tactical kicker and best at ending sets. We're still struggling to find a combination that does all that consistently, especially the last one. Milnes is young and learning. Chizzy seems to go "off-plan" more than JK likes. If you can't end a set well, you just invite pressure and limit try scoring chances.
Ethan Ryan is learning FB quickly, there were a few good moves when he hit the line at the right time & caused Fev problems. But again, McNally would have been doing that all season. I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm sure we've been looking for decent quality FB's since December. I read that we'd put in an offer for Tangata as well, so we're looking at all areas.

You're missing my point. I don't expect us to be near the top or getting promoted. However I DO expect us to be able to play with some attacking cohesion, string a few passes together, put on a few set moves and offload the ball once in a while. Right now we seem incapable of doing any of those things, except for maybe in the final 9 minutes of a match that is all but lost.




The loss of Keyes is huge, no doubt.

I’m disappointed with the attacking play as well. We seem to have some obvious deficiencies:

First, the backline stands too flat and takes the ball too slowly, partly because we’re too flat. Often a passing movement is just aimless passing down the line to a man that’s almost level. Players aren’t moving at speed. It’s very easy to defend against. When Ethan Ryan scored our first try yesterday that was the only real occasion I’ve seen us actually line up in attack with some shape and depth and hey presto we scored. It shouldn’t be difficult to get in position to run those attacking plays, you just make a call 2 or the tackles in advance so you’re all ready and in the right field position. Simple stuff in theory.

Second, we run across field far too much. How many times does Connor Farrell or Matt Garside run toward the corner flag instead of the try line when we’re in the opposition 20m area? It drives me mad. He just takes all the space from the centre and winger and creates nothing, no drop off or anything. Similarly our halfbacks run across the field to drop a player off inside and do it too far from the defensive line. As a result it doesn’t move the defence out of position at all. I can understand young Milnes being a bit reluctant as if you do this move properly you’re probably going to get smashed but doing it 2 or 3m from the defence creates nothing.

Thirdly, we never seem to offload. When we do it takes us by surprise. Fev must have triple the number of offloads to us yesterday. When we started to do it in the last 5-10 minutes it changed the game. What a surprise! Up the jumper rugby doesn’t create anything.

Lastly our last tackle options have if anything got worse in recent weeks. We are kicking the ball dead or putting in an easy kick far too often. Even worse we just turn the ball over without applying any pressure at all. Then there’s the usual desperation kick to the winger because we can’t move the ball through the hands. We need to do better. Milnes has a great short kicking game, can we use that more please?

I do think the halfback changes haven’t helped. We do also have two young players at halfback now so things will take time to gel. Changes to fullback haven’t helped either but I do think Ethan really did well yesterday with a try and two assists.

Despite our attacking weaknesses we’re still doing ok. Defensively we’re much stronger than we were in 2017. I had us to finish anywhere between 5th and 8th this year. I still think that’s possible but I think we need to improve the attacking play.

I was talking about cash not buying a decent performance, so I really don't think I was! You can't buy consistency, because as you say, we can do it, we just don't always do. A criticism that could have been levelled at pretty much every Bulls side in the past decade, so it's nothing new and certainly not panic stations IMO

Sort of what I was getting at earlier. With respect to your "we pay £X to get in so we deserve better" argument, I agree on the whole, we should be putting in better performances. But, I think we've had a very unsettled team this year, particularly in the front rowers and halves, and taking that into account, I would have bitten anyone's hand off to have taken our current league position at this stage in the season. I think your frustrations are partially, but not completely justified.