From the BBC ...

London Broncos coach Tony Rea:
"Everyone needs an attitude change. We are getting blown away in games far too easily.
"We are losing the ground war, losing the ruck war and losing the collision war consistently.
"It seems as though we are just trying to get through 80 minutes and going into damage-limitation straight from the off."

Let me translate

We have lazy players except for Cook and Cunningham.
Our forwards are rubbish with no mongrel except Cook and Cunningham.
We lost the three main BATTLES on the pitch, and thus lost the WAR.
The players just want to get through 80 mins. for their pay check, and the sooner we can get through the next 20 + 1 CC game we can be out of here and find real jobs with decent clubs or Pimlico Plumbers. One defo needs to resume their plumbing career, and the majority plumb new depths of rubbish rugby each week.
Damage limitation - do not want to tackle hard as it might result in serious injury like Kieron Dixon and thus from world at my feet to sitting in the stand sticking my tongue out for the big screen TV.


EVERY PART OF THE CLUB IS A DISORGANISED DISGRACE. It shames me to be do negative having followed the club since 1988. Even in the dark days of Chiswick it never felt this bad.

That's some going, I'm sure the young 'uns who were out there last night reading this will be really inspired! You even managed to rope in an injured player into your rant - seems you're not safe in the stand as a nonplaying member of the squad to escape your wrath! Ouch!

PS liked the plumbing puns though - could have had ' this seasons gone down the drain'!

I'm sorry - what were we expecting?

This is a collection of strangers and kids, playing against well-drilled, well-funded, vastly more experienced sides.

How we could expect any other outcome than consistent defeats, I don't know

The non playing player pulling faces at the camera should have been looking suitably embarrassed at the shameful performance of his team mates,not acting up like a child

Correct.

Must say, last night was one of the worst nights I have had watching LB (was having a nice evening in Moranos before the game. Wish we'd stayed there).

Deffo up there with being nilled by HKR and the mauling in the Medway.

He's like 21, still is a child.

I would rather they feel embarrassed for themselves, the club, the coach and the fans - so few that are left. If such stinging criticism does not inspire a response based on pride in ones self then we are truly doomed for extinction.

I would sooner they went down fighting than going through the motions waiting for the lights to go out. After all it is their livelihood for crying out loud. They could be on the dole come September and their career over.

To be honest not much this season. But the players with the odd exception gave nothing last night - they were defeated before evening stepping on the pitch. Collection of kids, but not all. Plenty of players with experience on the pitch last night.

Unfortunately the fans are not helping, and I include myself by way of this post. It is such a shame.

Both horror shows for sure, but for me the worst was the game against Wigan at the Stoop last year where they weren't even trying and could be clearly seen not to be!

Thankfully I missed that one.

That was my last game too. Completely predictable what has happened this season, but depressing all the same.

Missed the home game v Wigan last year or maybe it's just erased itself from my memory. The cup SF at Leigh takes some beating though.

Have to agree the lack of competitiveness this season was always predictable but last night's show was truly depressing. Sent me to bed early.


On another note, look who's here:


Are you going to talk to us, rupe1? You always did come out of the woodwork at the worst of times.

Agreed.

Plus, they're playing against more powerful sides all around the park, so, no matter how much effort they put in, the defence is going to get breached consistently. Last night I saw many of them busting a gut - goodness knows what the score would have been if they hadn't. It wasn't passion they were lacking it was power.

The regret for me is only being able to see in flashes the talent in the side. They're so occupied keeping the juggernauts at bay that they hardly get their hands on the ball and when they do they don't have the grunt to make any space to exploit.

JOC is the classic example. Against Ryan Hall last week and Justin Carney this week. Please! He can make three heroic efforts on the trot but he's not going to do it a fourth or a fifth time, and all his previous good work will be overlooked as he flaps hopelessly at a passing winger or centre as he tries to defend an overlap created initially by some big sod in the middle of the field.

TR can't correct this by wishing it away. You can't dominate if you aren't strong enough and there's no point criticising players for failing to do what is beyond them in the first place.

The tough season is only going to get tougher. We can carry on slagging them off or support them. Or I suppose there's a third option ...

Be interesting to hear him actually. He was saying years before people like GF about London going down the drain and how people tolerate poor performances on the field and how people would leave...... as well as other stuff that was way off the mark of course.

He was a fan from Fulham days and clearly had had enough before a lot of others on here.

I think that's a very fair assessment, thanks for posting.

As i said to my kids, they were bigger than us, stronger than us, fitter than us, faster than us and were more skillful and better drilled than us. And so it has been all along this season. I can't see that our personnel will change much now so what we have on the park is what we will see throughout the season. I don't think that they are going to get better now because moral and confidence has allready started to take its toll.

Just watched the Saints v Leeds game. Saints play with a team of kids and win.

Nathan Brown used the word desire. You might be limited with skill but everyone has desire. This is what TR doesnt appear to be able to inspire.

He has inspired desire in me to watch Rugby League somewhere else.

The game was lost yesterday because of three main reasons.

(1) The outside backs as a group were hopeless at defending.

Denny Solomona made 1 tackle. Given that the line was broken at least 11 times (for 9 tries and 2 disallowed) we were effectively playing without a last line of defence. He is recorded as missing 3 tackles and was nowhere to be seen elsewhere. He should be moved back to wing where he was not terrible.

Jamie O'Callaghan made 2 tackles and missed 5 with a tackle completion rate of 28.57%. Whilst he was the only player out of our backline to make a clean break he did not score. Given his record of less than 1 try/1 win per 5 games played he is not of the standard required. A better player is required.

Iliess Macani made 9 tackles and missed 3 tackles with a tackle completion rate of 75%. It was surprising to see him on the wing when he was arguably our man of the match at fullback against Leeds. I’d swap him back with Solomona that is for sure. He has potential.

Mason Caton Brown made 14 tackles and missed 5 tackles with a tackle completion rate of 73.68%. He looks impressive going forward having made 16 line breaks this season but he suffers from the general slow line speed in the team.

Of the outside backs only Mike McMeeken was impressive. He made 32 tackles with just 1 miss yesterday. This was one more tackle than all our other backs combined. James Woodburn Hall also did ok with 6 tackles and 0 misses.

(2) The playmakers created minimal opportunity as they have all season.

Ben Farrar made just 33 metres and kicked the ball twice and did not offload once plus missed 4 tackles with 17 made. He has created almost nothing from stand-off to date. He has created 2 tries this season.

Josh Drinkwater made 64 metres and kicked the ball eight times, mainly finding touch or the ball going straight to the fullback and missed 3 tackles with 17 made, but offloaded twice. He has created 0 tries this season

The only useful playmaker looks to be Scott Moore who has created 7 tries this season from Hooker and is making around 90 metres a game and 30 tackles. However he gives a couple of penalties away per game and misses about 1 in 10 tackles.

(3) The team are making about 30-50% less metres than the opposition with the teams average being around 1000-1100 metres to the 1500-1600 elsewhere.

I can understand it being difficult to topple players like Carney. What is unacceptable is when small men – being of no more than 14 stones – and not blessed with lightning speed are able to make huge swathes of metres. Michael Channing and James Clare made 10 line breaks between them and several hundred metres.

If we look at the team our backs are only really making metres from kick returns and about 2 clean breaks and 1 try per game between them all. This is nowhere good enough; surely a back must have a bit of speed, a step, a hand off or something that would take them past an opponent.

In the forwards the stats are not bad, although a slow play the ball and 5 to 6 metres won't generally be enough.

We have got to get the ball in the hands of the likes of Matt Cook, Vea and Greenwood who are the stronger runners.

Foster should never run the ball in whilst I would use Krasniqi also a purely defensive Prop.

Of the other forwards there are a few making only 50 metres per game when Andy Lynch made three times that on his own.

I would play as the team: Macani, Solomona, Farrar, McMeeken, Caton-Brown, Moore, Drinkwater, Greenwood, Cunningham, Krasniqi, Cook, Vea, Foster

The thing is for me, most of these players are relatively unproven but they have been on TV twice in a week and started to prove they are not good enough and in some cases also without the effort required to play for any team in Super League or the NRL. They may not care about us as a club but they are in my view making themselves a prime contender to play in the lower leagues.

I think the 51st to the 56th minutes were the worst I have ever seen given that we were about 30-0 down and then leaked three consecutive tries. This was a steaming pile of mediocrity.

I do not subscribe to the view that collapsing week after week is acceptable. It is not.

Thankfully my TiVo box misbehaved and failed to record the match!

Rammo, nice post. I've followed this forum for a couple of years. The Cas result has moved me to post. I wasn't expecting such a humping at home, I know some you guys were anxious but I really didn't expect it to be a 50 pointer.

Who is our D coach? Do we have one?

Are we saying that our current crop of players, especially the outside backs , just can't cut it in D ( or attack) at SL level because of physicality?

If those stats are week in week out then someone on the coaching staff needs to take responsibility for fixing it. That's someone's job.

I don't subscribe fully to that, there must be a case for it's not the size of the dog jn the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. Watching Lomax and Burrows getting stuck in is great.

I don't think we have much dog in our squad. We have tended to respond to a bit of biff ,playing up for a few minutes but that was the last couple of seasons.

Would any other coach be able to turn this squad into a competitive outfit? Or is there a stigma surrounding the London outfit that pervades into the players psyche that means they are never going to perform no matter what playing structures and communication you drill into them.

It is so terribly sad to see London getting stuffed on and off the pitch.

What will happen to the youth if there is no SL team in London? Trek up North for those who want to get on?

Chester Uni, Leeds Met etc even Gloucester offer pathways with foundation degrees for example.

Couple of guys from All Golds have gone to Noosa Pirates. Doesn't sound like a bad gig.

Mark, thanks for the interesting post. I would say, though, that the results and their manner were completely predictable, once the quality of recruitment became apparent. It's always going to be speculative to comment without being in the dressing room, but I have not seen anything to suggest the current coach is providing much in the way of organisation or inspiration, sadly.

For once I disagree. Why on earth would you play someone as a defensive prop? I've never heard such a thing. The prime role is to attack, they should be able to defend. Or not be there.

Of the stats, any news on the amount of ineffective tackles. That I suspect would be a killer for us.

JOC sticking an occasional arm out should be listed not so much an ineffective tackle as an effective turnstile.