But what about their form over the last 10 games of the season Hull 2 from 10. Quins 1 from 10.

Exactly, though. We finished on a sharply rising trend after an awful year; those two went into freefall after starting brightly. End of the day, its not how you start that matters its how you finish. And I'd say Bulls fans ought to be a fair bit happier than Hull or Quins fans (or for that matter Wire fans except for a certain fancy pot) right now?

OK, no-one can be happy about where we finished. But reading some of the feelings on here, you'd think it was US who'd finished on a long losing run?

That's the point I was trying to make did those wins come about because we'd improved or because they had dropped off remarkably.
This is tough one for me because if you look at our season it's the start that's cost us 5 points from a possible 20. Like you say you do want to finish strong but you can't start so poorly.
Why we've all missed out on the play offs.
Like wise do we forget about the previous 6 months and the other false dawns we've had.

It was interesting that our recovery coincided with Newton not being in the side.Pity it took so long to find Sykes best role, particularly has he had shown us against Saints earlier in the season he was good at half back. Burgess has made a good impact player, and they have played for each other in the last few games.

We finished on a winning run, and starting to look like a motivated team and not a bunch of disinterested strangers.

Hull and Quins precisely the opposite.

Are you seriously saying that had we finished on a continuing losing run, and continued to look like a load of disinterested strangers (not that Hull did last night, mind), you would be no more unhappy than you are now?

Because that's effectively what you just said.

Regarding Newton...indeed.

Its interesting that Macca got there in the end with those three decisions.

What I'd really like to know is whether he was hamstrung by injuries earlier in the campaign from making those changes, or whether he didn't work it out till recently. If the latter, most people would suggest that that was an adverse reflection on him as head coach. And I think they would be right, too. But, even so, and too late as it transpired, at least he did work it out in the end so that surely has to be a more positive sign?

I still don't believe that the problems that have affected us all seaon have been sorted thats why i'm notgetting too carried away like most people seem to be are doing.

Don't see much sign of people getting carried away, to be honest. Just maybe folk finding reasons to be less morbid and downright miserable than they maybe have felt until recently. Realise hope does not work for everyone though. But maybe one or two more people than hitherto have half-full glasses than half-empty ones now?

I don't see anyone getting carried away, this season has been a major disappointment. However, I do see people saying 'season over, ended on a decent streak, let's see what happens next year'. Not too unreasonable IMO

As a starter I'll say that we are renewing season tikets next week BUT,
there has been too many dire performances this year with lack of effort and application that are not mitgated with a few wins towards the end.
Rather those latter performances show how bad previous ones were.

Carried away?

Most people?

Are you drunk?

Who TF has seemed remotely carried away to you, then? Where?

You seem to have something of a drink fixation tonight FA

Tony Smith took over Wire when they were pretty much rock bottom of the league and going nowhere, thanks to the "efforts" of a guy that plenty on here would bizarrely like to see return to Odsal despite having a less than sparkling effort.

Smith in mid season had to ship out the odd "troublemaker" in quick time and yet still managed to lead them quickly up the table and, of course, won them the Challenge Cup. Fair enough, Wire did not make the 8 but they were well out of the picture anyway when Smith came along. I reckon that a comfortable league improvement and a Cup Win in about five months is a pretty decent return TBF.

After all, if WE had won the cup, you would likely be quickly on here in order to gloat that a CC win is a sign of McNamaras quality.

As for the end of the season? I agree that improvement has been shown but it was all too little too late. The players showed this season that they could perform when they wanted to do but that they were incapable of a consistent run until the end of the season when it ultimately did not make any difference.

An early cup exit and a failure to reach the play-offs represents a very poor season and I fail to see why anyone could feel any different.

Three points.

1. What are you basing your comment that the players can do it 'when they want to?' on? Why would they 'want to' more at Wire than at Salford?

2. The Wire example is far less cut and dried than you make out. TS took over after three games - how could they be 'out of the picture'? Since then they have won 11 games from 23, making it back into the eight then falling away. Have a look at last year and guess what, the 'useless' Cullen/Lowes combination won precisely 11 games between rounds 4 and 26.

3. Now it's all done with, have a look at our results this year. I don't understand how your first reaction can be 'poor' rather than 'plain weird'.

The thing is, no-one is saying it has not been a poor season. It is downright disingenuous at best, and thoroughly dishonest at worst, for anyone to suggest otherwise if seeking to try and shift the argument back to their own platform.

The only point that seems to be at issue, from reading all the comments on this thread, is whether in the final quarter of the season we see some hope for the future, and whether as a result people are feeling any happier - or at least any less unhappy - than a few weeks ago.

I submit that, in the minds of most people, the mood has improved and the gloom lifted somewhat. That might not suit some people, especially anyone whose principal contribution seems to be bayoneting the wounded, and there are some people who still seem to be as unhappy now as they would have been had we lost the last five - or at least they say they are.

People I gave spoken too though fit into the "gloom lifted" category for sure, although the consensus is that we need to see a continuation of the late improvement surge into next season before we can say this [iannus horribilis[/i is truly behind us.

Maybe if people want to have a post-mortem on the season, and spend away their winter hours chewing on everything that went wrong and on how bad we were and how bad the coach was, that belongs in a different "fighting the last war" thread? One that those of us who prefer to look forward can read or ignore as we choose.

My question is why. A lot of people I know have said we only started to play when it looked like we were playing for nothing when the pressure was off.

And the final game of the season when the pressure was back on - we still put out a performance. i think that would be due to the increased confidence a run of wins will do for you.

I am in the "gloom lifted" category. Despite what I said a few weeks ago a good run to finish the season has given me some optimism. Macca is still going to be coach next season so we have to work with what we have got. The only player leaving that I feel could be a mistake is Morrison- I will shed no tears over the rest. The ones coming in I know nothing about but am happy that Beaver will probably have vouched for the Manly 2.

The other reason for optimism is that the few lads who have had some gametime from the academy have shown that SL is not out of their depth and should improve with more gametime - esp Donaldson

Did we it took us a good 25 minutes to get going in which time Hull had created 3 or 4 good chances which they didn't take it. I'm not doubting the effort wasn't their but it wasn't a good performance at all.

Now that is a bit harsh when one reason Hull didn't take their chances is because we scrambled well, the chance they did take was dubious in the extreme and the late withdrawal of Dave Halley and the sinbinning of Glenn Morrison each provided serious disruption at a time when it was difficult to do much about it. Regardless, we won the game.

So are we expected to be happy with 9th place and an early exit from the cup? Ok , the last few weeks have made things a little better, but we can't be pleased can we? Surely not.

I think we could still do with some answers as to why we have performed so eratically this year. If indeed there is any.

And as publically stated at the fans forum (answering my question

) the club would have expected at LEAST a decent play off run. So what happens now we have not had one?

Since people seem intent on dragging this thread away from the questions asked by the OP, lets revisit them?

=darkred1. Are we any happier with Steve as coach for 2010?
A tad but i still have huge question marks over the performances this year. the run of 5 games has probably come at the right time for him, imagine the calls if we'd missed the play offs after being in them. The point is the way the end of the season turned out has probably bought him some time (with the fans), however, the season is not made or lost in 5 games and I guess the overall end result was disappointing.

=darkred2. Has the recent run of games proved anything about his ability to manage the team and motivate them?
It's easy to say yes but I'm not too sure, he lost certain players which seemed to coincide to some degree with a turn around in our form, I guess you could argue he also lost others earlier in the year (who recently came back) which could have altered it the other way as well. There are 27 games in the season and lets be honest he's had plenty of chance before this year to deal with issues of management and motivation. His only response is to say the gods have been smiling on us, I'm not sure that cuts the mustard when your a head coach with a team which at times has looked lost, disinterested and lacking ideas.

=darkred3. What should be a realistic goal for next season?
Queue the 10 game brigade again.........


Play Offs the same as this year, unfortunately something he also missed out on.

Me?

I would suggest that reaching the play offs has to be a minimum every year. And we didn't this year - so not good enough really.

Macnamara is here for the next season at least, so we need more signings, more support for him in the form of assistants and more openess with the fans to keep us in the picture.

I wonder whether the whole Tame saga caused a few off field problems during the first part of the season.

I also wonder if Newton ruffled some feathers off the pitch.

I guess we'll never know the full truth, however we speculate