Ive woken up still in shock at how poor that was last night-I didn't watch it to the end it was that bad, made worse by Wiggy Hemmings scratching around trying to find positives for us.

We can make excuses for McDermott all we like and I accept we have injuries but this is now his team(possibly under financial constraints but spending more than Cas and Wakey) and we are dire. We are not comfortable with the ball. His whole thinking (my view) is based on defence. I would be embarrassed as a coach if other coaches kept saying Brian's teams will be fit. All SL teams are fit.

We have no desire to attack. Last night we never pushed the ball to the centres. It was one out against one of the most experienced packs in their league.

An earlier poster mentioned poor kicking, what about tackling? There is more to tackling that stopping someone, just look at Hudds they've turned it into a science. We never seem to knock the player back, they always get over us and equally when we hit the contact with the ball we get knocked back.(LMS is useless in both of these contacts-He as a player has gone backwards massively-Even Mac doesn't give him much game time)

Something has to change-What that is I dont know but the reality is we are a very poor side that plays a style that is uneasy on the eye. Q GF(how do you sell.............

One thing for sure is we are stuck with the team and I agree with comments that we are going nowhere and even backwards. A new coach is required NOW, somebody who can shake up the current crop of players, try new ideas and kick a few backsides. Mac has gone as far as he can, one win is six months is a very poor record by any standards, no more excuses a head has to roll.

It will be intersting to see if Walters goes this week-Im not suggesting we get him!! more a barometer of ambition between the clubs.

Do coaches get performance managed like other employees in business and therefore if they under perform you dont sack them you manage them out at no cost. It seems in sport if you get rid of a coach you have to pay him of.

Isn't there a character in the wizard of Oz - all heart and no brains?
It will be a long season bearing a miracle, a diet of crumbs and heroic (and some not so heroic) defeats. We may get a few home wins courtesy of Salford etc but I can't see many on the road, we were lucky to get one last night. Thanks god for Kevin Walters!

There are too many average players in the team. You have to have some to balance the salary cap but the rest have to be quality players in key positions who are smart and skillfull or gamebreaking props etc. the balance is all wrong and is why we look comletely devoid of ideas or impact

the plus side was that they kept going to the end - the minus was just about everything else. It's not just LMS who's going backwards, it appears to be everyone else - Hull had a nice quiet day at the office. Can we PLEASE fire BM? And this from someone who's by and large not a believer in getting rid of coaches in season!

We had that problem for a couple of seasons , Too many players who were just stocking fillers and nothing more .But credit to the club and coach ,binned 9 player's from last season and signed quality over quantity and so far , There's been a massive difference in style from last season. Like you say ,Quins need to add quality players to play along side the good players you already have down there.

It seems hard work is the only things BMcD expects or understands. It is one thing us having youngsters coming through but do we think BMcD will actually develop them. From the evidence of Louie and Clubby he seems more likey to arrest their development. Wish he would do the decent thing and resign.
[i
Harlequins coach Brian McDermott:
"I'm not concerned about our form. We've got some blokes missing and we recognised it was going to be a tough start to the season.

"As long as the effort is there and as long as we don't implode, we will get some momentum.

"I think it's great that some of our young players are improving in there, the likes of Ben Bolger, and there are some good signs there."[/i

What constitutes imploding?

He is grasping at straws with the BB comment- he would never have got a look in if we didn't have so many injuries

Not sure what it means but can only guess it is a reference to the second half of last season.

I hear what people are saying about our coach, but be fair, to say they are making the same mistakes really is nothing to do with the coach but the players themselves. They're not coached to make mistakes.



Not too sure about that one. Not good enough for SL anyway.

Do you really believe that any coach at any level is not asking for any push? I'd have had atleast 2 walkie-talkies bouncing off my head before half-time if that was the case.





Interesting to note that. I've only see LMS play two, maybe three times and the most startling thing I noticed was his lack of fight when tackled.

You know your footy wire-quin, are you emotionally driven here or are they really being that poor? PM me if you can. I'd like to know. Ta.

I wasnt going to comment on the side for at least another couple of games. mainly because of injuries and non per-season and all, but i just cant.

I like wire quin in the end couldnt keep watching,the only good i could say about last night was how well the shirts looked.

It took us 27 minutes to get in their half for the first real attacking chance and thats not even good enough for a championship side let alone a SL one

As for attack that we all have mentioned the lack of, well you cant get an attack if you cant get the forwards to do the job and as it has been said ours look lightweight compaired to other sides. Plus we never seem to use dummy runners or run from deep we always look like we have a flat attack line, i may have this wrong and im sure someone will tell me when i have this bit wrong.

Also on attack can someone please tell me why we just keep attacking down the short side when near the line, we never seem to have the room to move in it, and last night Hull had plenty of cover when we did try (again and again)
So this leads me on to Boots n All the other night and Paul Cullen who sat there and pointed out the best way to beat Hull was not down the middle but to get the ball out wide and wear their forwards out chasing the game. But no we did just what he said not to do and went down the middle and took on their forwards and we all saw we lost that battle from the first minute.(he has mentioned that we like the short side too so which side did their homework)

As for getting rid of Mac. I'm not sure if right or wrong at the moment, but i do know and no disrepect to the other coaches under him, that we need someone with SL expreince to help in that area you only have to look at other clubs at see how many work under the head coach.
The guy i would have liked the Club to go for as assistant to Mac, would have been Dave Clark up at Barrow. you can see what they have done under him as a head coach and then back as assistant and hes the one who has showen them the way to attack. which would leave Mac to sort out defence he loves so much.
but like all wishes you want to come true i heard that this guy has been offered a good job at Wigan so is off there.

For the Squad, we bring in Mat James and Ben Jones and well both seem to have disappear from view. And this brings me to Kaye. I just dont get this one, his postion is Hooker,hes been here two years now and has worked in all that time with Randall who claims hes a good player,but we dont see him on the bench Mac goes for Melling as back up hooker.

I'm all for bringing in young southern kids but last night if he wasnt injuried then surely Kaye would have been better from bench when it looked like Randall had moved to SO (dont no if right just looked like it as Melling kept going to first receiver after the tackle).

But if he(Kaye) was injuried then why not have started game with Smith at SO. I dont see many reserves game but i understand this is his postion, ok he lacks SL expreince, but Melling just looked lost at SO and at least Smith would have had a clue about the role expected of him from this postion. And from what i saw of him last night he didnt do to bad for the time he was on and did get the backs moving

That will do fed up moaning. i say one more thing if Mac's worried the forwards we have cant do the job (james and jones as we dont see them) and now with Karl T injuried again is it worth looking for loaners, someone like Sam Moa up at Hull he cant seem to get in the side and he stands at 6ft and 17 stone so he would add some beef to the pack.

Anyway Roll on Leeds that should be fun.

I cannot believe they are coached at all

Just look at the difference Nathan Brown has made to some of the players at Huddersfield, guys who had some ability but were going nowhere and he seems to have given them that little bit of know-how and understanding that can make a difference to players and a team.

Have to disagree. Hudds were shaping up to be a decent team before he got there IMO.Came in at the right time and they have real quality players who can change a game on their own.
However the players do seem to know what their jobs are and play with a good structure which asks questions of the opposite defenses. They roll the dice and get their fair share of luck. Sadly we have no one capable of rolling the dice..

I thought there were some positives. Low error count, plenty of local youngsters not out of place at this level. Smith looked good when he came on. Negatives? Lack of aggression in terms of chasing our kicks, closing down their kicker, defensive line speed, hitting the ball at pace (come on LMS and TC!). Im not too dis-heartened by the perfomance. Luke Williamson is a podgy waste of space. NL2 quality. Get rid.

With so many injuries, it puzzles me why the club don't look for some good loan players with experience to fill a short term need until our regular players are fit. Look at how well Ainscough did for Cas, who is out on loan! My concern is that the club appear to be focused on the long term in terms of young player development, and are effectively saying that we should write off the next few seasons until that development has taken place.

The comments about Brian McDermott are interesting. On the one hand you could look at what Brown at Hudds has done since taking over from Sharp (an experienced SL coach), and in particular Maguire at Wigan who took over from a very experienced coach, but appears to have taken them to another level. The club has a choice to make - you can either be honest, or talk the club up to the media. Which would you prefer?

However ultimately, it is about money, and until someone comes along to assist David financially, the downward spiral will continue. All the promising players developed will simply be poached by other clubs, and we will never realise our potential as a club. I for one am tired of the patronising and "damned by faint praise" we are constantly hearing - plucky, brave, never give in etc. I would prefer respect.

We need someone who is prepared to help DH out financially and bring in some quality players to make us competitive. Even with the players injured back in the team the quality isnt there to turn us into a team to threaten the rest. I am disappointed with Ian Lenaghan. He should just hand over his share to DH IMO who could then find a buyer himself.
The shares cant be worth much and IL doesnt seem bothered about finding a replacement. Too involved with Wigan to give his time up to sort our future out.

Relatively it isnt that expensive to run a moderately succesful SL club. What we need is someone running the club on a day to day basis who has a vision and is very demanding of his staff. Read the article about Hetherington in this months RL World if you want to see how its done. Its not all about having a sugar daddy. Far from it.

I wonder if hes up for another challenge then nows he turned Leeds in to what they are and come down here and give us a hand.

At least the Hull stewards were kind enough to be giving out free tickets to anybody who wanted them before the match.

The underlying problems haven't really changed from last season because we haven't really addressed them.

1) We lack a quality scrumhalf with a kicking game, Orr is the only player who can organise, but he's more naturally suited to a stand off role than scrum half. Also, whilst Orr's attacking kicking is okay (hence tries for Howell last season and Sharp this season) he doesn't give us great positioning or distance in general play, and nor do any other players e.g. Randall. This hurts because we don't gain easy yards from penalties like our opponents, we never get 40/20's and generally we don't make it as hard as we should for our opponents to return our kicks. Purdo might help a little when he comes back, but Gale and Dorn are unlikely to make any difference.

2) Our pack is underpowered, people say LMS has gone backwards, that might be true, but he plays in a lightweight pack with a lack of go forward. It was good to see Karl back, bad to see him go again, but that he's our best prop only reminds us how little size and depth we have. Of the props I don't see Ben Jones, Danny Ward or Matt James offering us much, I don't think Olly Wilkes is anything but a stop gap.

3) We appear to be signing players to make up the numbers in our reserves and players who aren't good enough to play for teams we should be aiming to be above, a few seasons ago BM was slating clubs who get stuck at the bottom of the ladder because they trade e players with each other, now we take players who aren't even good enough for that. I think the only club with a weaker squad than us is Salford, I think we'll be 13th this season.

We need a coaching clear out and a player clear out, half our squad either simply aren't good enough for this level or are average.

I accept most of kelvin's post, but I would say that if we were going to have a clear out, it would have been at the end of last season after a 10 game losing run and a 48-0 thrashing by Cas in a vital game. Major surgery was needed to arrest the alarming lack of confidence (which is what Bradford and Hull have done). It hasn't happened, all we did was to lose 4 experienced players (Heckenberg, Gafa, Robinson and Haggerty) and replace them with youngsters - which is why I pointed to a long term benefit perhaps if we could keep them when they mature.

There is clearly not the resources to compete for honours, so all we have to be thankful for is that there is a Super league club at all in London. Surely the RFL could be more pro-active in seeking investors.

While this is true, is the situation that different than we have experienced at other times ? Perhaps Tony Rea, for example, did a better job of managing his limited resources.