But you wouldnt think so listening to that pair of Blithering Idiots on Sky.

lets be fair, it was a vastly under strength castleford team with all their best players missing.... it was a straight forward walk in the park.

we did play well though.

Scratchy

Wewere Shit in parts, switched off.

Very average performance.

I thought we responded well from last week, 48-10 is a very good result.

I thought we were alright, very good defensively just made a few too many errors. Playing against the Cas B team I expected a win but our performance was better than I expected. MMonas had a good game, made some outrageous dummies.

We were nowhere near excellent and it's a good job Cas didn't have any of their big guns playing. Couldn't believe it when we were 18-0 up, they'd been battering us. Some good tries though, including a bit of wizardry from Monas (before he started throwing a few shockers). Trent and Woody need to buck their ideas up. I thought Atkins played well.

Plus Roy had his best game for us yet.

That performance made me realise just how far we have fallen from a couple of years ago. Despite missing half their team Cas played with energy and enthusiasm and were exciting to watch. Lots of darting runs, always a player backing up and they ran hard onto the ball.

We could do with a bit of that.

Defended well; played okay.

Westwood and Waterhouse look massively out of shape!

After last week I really wanted to see us start well and we didn't in fact we started poorly again. I want to see our early completion rates high and us defending the opposition in their own half. We were good in the second half and had a good spell in the first half.

I thought Atkins was very good again, he is looking much more like his former self these days. Grix looked sharper, we have really missed this guy, him playing also allowed Harrison to play prop and I think it suits him there. With hill it's got to the point that we don't even need to review his performance. We were pretty good all over the park Russell solid in defence and got a nice try assist for ratchford which was good to see, more of that in attack please matty. Rhys Evans came up with 2 try saving tackles and 2 tries so a good return from him. Those 4 props for the rest of the season would be nice.

We really shouldn't be conceding so many goal line drop outs against an excellent reserve set up or defending so many sets early in the game. Poor handling & a resulting massive defensive effort were our undoing last week.

I thought our attack was poor again and we lack direction, we desperately need a proper halfback.

I don't think we played particularity well, but did TS know that we would win this game so reigned the Lads in a bit.

Only to let them loose from here on in against the Giants, Saints & Wigan and then on in to the Play offs.

I was thinking this. Will we ever see someone as great for us as Lee was?
The problem is real quality half backs just don't grow on trees.

My mate was saying last night that we do have a wonder kid half back in our 16s that could be a great but that is ifs & buts and even if he did make the grade then we wont see him for another 5 seasons.

Major highlight - Russell didn't pass the ball forward and gave an assist.

have a word with yourself and get behind your own team....they had loads of possession and created all just like Leeds in the first half last week. When Castleford gave us similar amounts of possession we slapped 48 points up their .

I despair at the apathy towards our club. we had to suffer a attendance last night by wire fans and now we've got people saying they want us to be like a club that brought twenty fans and drum having just secured a wembley spot and who's team were totally and utterly clueless.

Moran was stood behind me last night and was ed off with the attendance. If he chucks it all in. maybe we'll be a bit more like Cas and everyone will be happy eh?

I am not aware of this wonder kid and I have watched them every game this year.

Sorry to say there isn't anyone like the Lee Briers we signed at 17 years old. Not sure there will ever be at this rate, the game has changed.

I'm sorry but Cas did not play well.
They had moments but how many times did the ball come out from the ptb to a clueless HB stood still with no move set up? Or passes going to the wrong player? At one point the hooker picked the ball up and stood on the spot looking around as no one was making themselves available. He gave up and just ran the ball straight in making about 3 yards.

Is that really exciting to watch?

We were made to look average by what was essentially an 'A' team. If Cas didn't have their eyes on next week I wouldn't have been surprised if we saw a repeat of Easter Monday.

I think your Cas dig is unfair, not many people are able to afford a Friday night away game sandwiched between the semi and final. They have played some fantastic football this year and deserve nothing but praise, especially when you consider the budget and facilities available to Powell in contrast to our set up at Warrington.

Two years ago I was one of about 50 people who watched London put 62 points past us. Attendances have been poor this year but there has been no effort to market at all. If it looks like the club sing interested you're going to struggle getting people in. Don't knock a club that is working really hard on and off the field.

In the modern era the game is now entertainment and the club is a business with customers. If customer numbers fall the club have to look at themselves as to the reasons why.

Average attendance at Warrington is dropping significantly.

I suspect disinterest in the league format and price of tickets.

2013 avg attendance 10,465*
2012 avg attendance 11430
2011 avg attendance 11,149***


*Sporting Life data.
*** Daily Telegraph

Blaming league format is lazy imo. If it were true across all clubs then maybe it's time to look at it, but Saints for example are up 8% yoy with 1 home game left...

It seemed like the good times were back at the start of the year, so that probably brought a fair amount of floaters back inflating your crowds,


How do they stand up to last year's individual figures

Even taking that point, it would imply the product on the pitch and success are more important than the league structure itself. I'd argue that the league structure as an external factor is almost a negligible affect. Also Saints have had the "were back" factor for the past 2 years now!

Saints yoy breakdown:

[code
2013 2014 Yoy change
Bradford 11385 10238 -10.1%
Castleford 10943 12648 +15.6%
Catalan 11111 11321 +1.9%
Giants 12003 10218 -14.8%
Hull fc 11257 13448 +19.4%
Hull Kr 10820 11818 +9.2%
Leeds 12228 13788 +12.8%
London 9926 9408 -5.2%
Salford 5348 10391 +94.3%
Wakefield 12105 11000 -9.1%
Warrington 14715
Widnes 11438 11844 +3.6%
Wigan 14204 17980 +26.6%
[/code

Cheers for that, Wtf happened with the reds last year ?