...or lack of it!

what is going on, we look awful in defence, not working hard enough for each other? not completing sets which puts pressure on the defence?

the backs are awful...mcgillvary always has been, cudjoe not his usual solid self in defence, wardle misses tackles for fun, broughton awful

conceded

44 - cas
35 - salford
22 - hull kr
22 - london
22 - leeds
22 - wigan
41 - saints

sorry but the above just is not good enough, and it doesnt seem to improving!!!!! this is the problem, anderson talks about it but nothing is changing?? can he not motivate them anymore?

We've conceded far too many tries this season yes. I'd say it was down to us giving away too much cheap possession which is sapping our energy.

Very unfair on Jerry. His defensive position can be at times dodgy but he hits hard in defence. Same with Wardle. He's made some terrific tackles this season.

Our back line lack support. We defend too much down the middle and leave the outer edge open. But that's down to the entire team. They can only stand so far away or they'd be a gap somewhere else.

Top spot is out of reach and they don't even want it. Old Trafford is there aim. We may just peak at the right time. If not, and we serve up this kind of performance in the playoffs then Anderson should be questioned. To me he's just a coach learning from last season. Can't not trust him after last season.

yes giving away cheap possession, we did it again lastnight... struggle to do a full set, then when we did we had a poor kick....obviously no brough and have had it in this area ...but we have known this for a while now and have we done anything about it?? no...anderson should have, maybe ellis will be the answer next season.

jerry was exposed abit lastnight but wasnt his fault but on too many occasions the other teams are scoring for fun down his wing.. meli 3 at salford, hodgson at hull kr for example.

wardle loves to come in with this big hits and looks great when it comes off but alot of the time it doesnt, not checked recently but i know a few weeks ago he had the most missed tackles in the team.

i can see fans start calling for andersons head if things dont fix up, we are not improving and he keeps going on about the same things every week.

top 6 is our best hope now, think top 4 has gone, catalans chasing us down for that 6th spot

Fifth surely is where we want to be?

if we carry on conceding at this rate it might not be top 8, that would be a disaster season after finishing 1st and some serious questions would need to be asked

Our defence is what's costing us games, we should be good enough to score 30 points in games and do enough to win but we're not !!

Every try every team scores against us seems to be either a gift off a mistake or simply walking through our non existant defence.
20 metres out if a team runs at us its almost inevitable now that it will result in 4 points. I can't decide whether it's players, individually or collectively, not trying hard enough or whether it is something to do with the tactics/gameplan they have been instructed with !

Every team, London included, look like scoring everytime they attack us. London and possibly Bradford aside me must have the worst defence in the country at the moment !!

it's a real concern at the minute, our attack is fine, as daz says scoring 30 points should see you pick up wins.
i think its just individual errors costing us rather than collectively, like i said in the cas thread, basic errors and bad decision making cost us at least 4 tries.
we need a massive improvement, 85 missed tackles in 2 games is unacceptable.

another 26 points shipped today

A Lot could be learnt by watching the positional play of Frances Meli. He always stays close to the the touchline so the attaking player can only attempt to go inside him thus forcing him toward the sliding defence. If his opposing winger did not also adopt this position he would be available for an almost walk in try from along inside pass. i have seen him score many tries like this for Saints often against Jermaine who positions himself too far inside the touch line

I think that Jerry is quickly losing confidence in Leroy.

There were a couple of occasions today where he looked to be giving him a right mouthful and showing him where he should be defending.

the first try they scored, looked like broughton was well inside, bearing in mind that,to me we had a 3 on 3 in defence, why was broughton more or less on wardle's shoulder allowing them a walk in try with no one near luke george?

i have said in another thread we just don't hit the opposition hard enough, we don't win collisions,we don't put teams on the back foot.

i think they had 4 stroll in tries today as well as broughton getting beaten in the air again by george.

The try at the end I excuse. Grubbed kicks are very hard to defend as the ball can bounce anywhere.

What I have noticed it there is no camaraderie. No one in all in they dont look like a team. I watched Catalans against Wakey and Widnes against Wire and every big hit or when they tackled a player into touch there was big back slaps all round same as if they had scored a try, I dont see that from the Giants.

Its same as when Broughy got took out other week vs Salford, where were all his mates flying in to dish out a bit of justice, conspicuous by their absence. Not sure whats going on behind the scenes and may be reading it wrongly but we dont look like a team atm

According to the stats we missed just 9 tackles yesterday. A massive improvement but still we conceded 26 points.
Ukuma taai made 32 tackles without a miss and an average gain of 7.59 metres per carry-a great stint from him. Patrick only carried the ball three times!!

I thought we were a lot better in the second half. 2 tries conceded one within a minute of the re-start and 1 when we already had the game won.

The same problems were there, though. I sure all but one if not all their tries were due to our errors. Connor & Ta'ai both dropped the ball at least 3 times each, stupid off loads tried, and we still seem to be losing 80% of collisions. Improvement, yes, but a long way to go.

also im sure patrick gave a pen away and got the ball thrown in his face and just looked at who did it and turned around, where is the mongrel?! i know hes not that type of player but we cant just let teams keep taking the pee out of us.

When we train we get Brough kicking to the corner but there is never anyone there challenging our boys for the high balls. We should be getting them to practise challenging for high balls. If we practise an attacking kick to the LHS then our we should have some "defenders" there to make it more realistic.

We make the same mistakes every week. That's a coaching issue IMO as well as motivation, application, effort, mongrel. If we don't find some form and some beans from somewhere now then we will be humiliated in the play offs. They have it in them because they'd managed to play consistently better last season and the squad is basically the same. They need to be honest with each other, have out whatever it is that's going tits up and get it sorted and done with.

We've already conceded more points this year than the entire of last season, 510 compared to 507 last.

We're conceding an average of 24 points per game which if that carries on we will have an end of season tally of 655 points against !!

Agree with your last paragraph.

All our problem are for PA to sort. They haven’t been sorted in the last 20 games (first game excepted) so I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll all be sorted in the next 6. If they aren’t sorted immediately we’ll end up where we are now and I can’t see us making any progress from 6th when, with basically the same players we couldn’t do anything form 1st last year.

Momentum is built, not switch on and off like a tap and we are fast running out of games to build it.

The only theory I can put forward is that we are sub-consciously trying to lull to rest of Super League into a false sense of security and we are suddenly going to burst into life in the play-offs.

Winning more collision, faster play the balls and ruck speed, faster line speed, stopping offloads, less unforced mistakes, less penalties, better defence out wide (on the ground and in the air), playing for 80 mins, being composed near the oppositions try line, having some mongrel , building pressure (did Bradford actually have to drop out from under their own posts?) – there’s a lot to fix in 6 games.

I’ve stopped reading the Examiner ‘cos I know exactly what I’ll be reading – the same old of the last few months.

Time to stop the talk and walk the walk. Here’s hoping.

I wonder if the problem is an attitude one? Every week, even during the recent winning streak, we've had PA (and the fans and players) being really down on themselves and complaining about the performances.

This year we win a game narrowly and it's all "That's not the performance we were looking for, we were disappointing, we need to work harder and smarter". Last year we won a game narrowly and it was "We won, we did what we needed to do, got the win, next week we move on and play again". A big difference in style.

There was much talk last year of the players "writing their own story" and almost every match they looked like they were having a cracking time just playing the game. This year, the same coach and players, and it's like they're pulling teeth, like they've decided their story this year is going to be a dull miserable one and they're hating every moment.

It's supposed to be fun FFS! If I wanted misery I'd watch the news or listen to my work colleagues droning on.


I think it's fixable very quickly. Very quickly indeed. Get the lads to remember how much they enjoy playing rugby. That'll sort 90% of it.

certainly need to use cudjoe more with high cross field kicks, he can out jump almost anyone... paid off for one try on sunday when they tried it.

They seem to be snatching at balls when passed to them as if they're hot potatoes. It's almost as if PA is giving them a rollicking every week and they are trying too hard. This is a test of PA's man management. Some need rollicking, some need an arm around the shoulder, everybody is different. Like you say they need to relax a bit, remember why they decided to play this game in the first place and think back to the enjoyment they had last year.

On another note I've a work colleague who drones on and has to read out every bit of news so that when I get home there's no point putting the telly on to see what's happened in the world. I look forward to watching a game at the weekend but I'm ending up frustrated seven days a week now! Well, actually six days - I get Saturday off.

they do seem to want to score off every play at times too, build the pressure! hope Anderson is learning alot this season going forward

Sometimes on our own 20 they need to not chuck the ball around hoping to do length of the field tries all of the time.