We were never convincing at full strength early doors. Top five a certainty we were told. Yet all our wins barring Hull away could have gone either way. We were good at Leeds but they are poor and then failed to score a point in a home defeat. Hammered by London twice scorelines flattered us. Obviously injuries are a factor but they are at any club, if chester stays someone needs to be brought in to support him in the John kear role.

Don't let him drag you down to his level.

Carter will not sack Chester no way. But he's got to ask why when other players come in, why don't they know how we play Ok We've lost a lot of players through injury but the players that have come in should know our system. Top teams have players come in & it's like they know exactly what to do. Is it Chester or the other coaches fault Our halfbacks are just not cutting it yet we've signed them for 3 years & one for 2 We're going to have to wait a bloody long time to win something & this signing players that are just good players aren't doing it if we can't spend the money we're not going to compete with the big boys

As a Wire, he didn't look fit from the start. Was felled by a tackle round his ankles, and hobbled off. Hope it's not serious.

I certainly don't think Chester should be sacked, but to say 'most' of his team are injured is a bit much! Ironically the last match we won was at Hudds wasn't it? Randell's first game back, no Ashurst, England, Miller, Brough..... yet we won. We haven't won any since they have returned. You could argue last night we had 5 players out who would make the 17, but it's always arguable who you would call regulars. It has been a nightmare re. injuries, it was our turn I suppose, we've been lucky the last 3 seasons in that respect, but I still think some of the performances when we had almost everyone available earlier on weren't great. I think next year is Chesters' last chance if you like to take this 'team' forward, after all it's he and his players who have been constantly crowing about playing in semi-finals, talking has to be done on the field eventually.....

We were pretty good last season and didn't have one, you keep plugging this one but it doesn't stack up. You did it on another post when you said JK was above CC, he wasn't CC was the top dog, Kear was an advisor. It worked OK but it worked just as OK without him.

Also I'd love to know a RL club where these directors of rugby have made much of a difference, do Saints or Cas or Wigan have one? Leeds do and and he's their first ever, that's working out well isn't it

Sadly, I think the our recent dip isn't particularly the number of injuries we've suffered; we should still be able to play decent rugby with the "stand-ins", but it was when a certain person left to take over the reins at Bradford Bulls. Kear and Chester, were the nearest we have been to a dream team of coaches. Chester just doesn't seem to be able to cut it for me on his own.

Kear doesn’t seem to be cutting it at Bradford either . Just don’t get the obsession with him at the moment .

Jon Wells...

Not so much of an obsession, cocker. He just seems to bring the best out of players and gets them to "play" when their backs are against the wall. Don't thick he's quite got the raw material at Bulls that he's had elsewhere.. Silk purse and sow's ear and all that. I'd have him back at BV tomorrow.

If a team is busted it’s busted . Not only do we have the injuries keeping players out but we are having to play injured players . Hull fans or some of them wanted rid of Radford not long ago when they were going through the injury horrors , not so now !!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of the "Chester out" brigade. Not at this point in time. I would just like to see him paired up with Kear again. I think that's when we played our best rugby.

It is a shame Jowitt is not fit because I would be tempted to move Hampshire to scrum half and rest Brough. I guess we must hope that because it is Huddersfield he ups his game because I am not seeing much creativity from one of the main pivots.

I think Broughie is doing ok.
The pack is the problem.
Not quite what it was due to injuries and loss of form.

So you think young Croft should come in and start playing like Tupou, Kershaw like Johnstone , Gwadze like Huby !!!!! Etc It is not going to happen , these youngsters have been amazing but the players missing make something happen from nothing .

Have to give massive credit to Jack Croft who clearly played on at Warrington in a lot of pain due to arm injury , still gave his all .

I'd also add Tom wasn't as good as Tom is now when he was Kershaw's age. Same for Tupou. He wasn't this good when he started with us.
Takes time.

I don't think anyone was expecting the youngsters to come in and put in world class performances. They have come in and done a job, not looking out of place at this level which is a huge positive.

What is worrying is how slow we look in attack when we have our first choice 1,6,7 and 9 on the pitch. We somehow looked faster last year with Finn and Grix playing.

Think a lot of the slowness is down to the slow ptb from the forwards .

This has been a problem for a long time yet nobody in the coaching staff seems to be targeting this

Our handling and an effective last tackle play have been woeful this season.
One of the major plus points of having Brough in the side should be his ability to recue something from the 4/5th tackle, even if it's just getting a decent containing kick away.
I suppose with lots of changes and new players coming in, timings will always be affected but, our basic handling and passing skills have been truly awful, with balls getting passed to ground, into the crowd, having to be collected on the boot laces or above the heads of players.
This isn't acceptable at amateur level and bar the odd error, should definitely not be happening at SL level.
7/8 year olds pass the ball "anywhere" but pro players should be getting it right for the vast majority of the time.

I'm not sure that we did. I seem to recall that this was what everyone was moaning about last year and the year before too. Can't be d to look back through all the threads to find it but I reckon if I had some time to spare then I could find numerous examples of folk moaning about this exact problem.
Just because we're struggling now let's not rewrite history and pretend that it's worse now than it was last year.

If you look at the highlights from the last two years we have scored spectacular and well created tries from all parts of the field.
Even this year we had the kick from Brough against the flow for Miller or the switch of attack on a training ground move that were both on TV and both lauded at the time.
It's not that we can't. We are just not getting ourselves into the position to do it.

I disagree, we are getting ourselves in the position to do it, we just seem to lack all attacking structure when we get near the opponents line. Hull KR and Rhinos at home were prime examples where we had lots of field position but it is happening in most games. I think with Chester in the early days we used to score a lot of long range tries. Back end of last year and early this year we relied on a spectacular finish by TJ or BT/Pauli busting their way over. Maybe it''s just me but it doesn't seem like we're creating an overlap all that often this year.

Also seem to concede from kicks a lot more than we score from them which is annoying.

I think it is about what's happening at the end of a set - and that's affected by what's happening in the build up; we're just not laying a platform by making solid metres in the early part of a set, so we're clawing back some of those metres in the middle part, and subsequently scrambling for a finish, rather than executing a set move from a strong position.

Analyse it all you like, but our ability to execute on-field has been directly and self-evidently undermined by the loss of some of our best players to long-term injury; no team copes well with that, least of all us, with relatively limited strength in depth - and that's not in any way to diminish the efforts of Kershaw, Croft etc - but they're just not first team players yet, with good reason.

It holds true for defence too - the team is disrupted, uncertain, and lacking fluency and confidence in each other - and as such, the defensive structure we were lauding early season, has fallen apart.

John Kear can't fix this - only medicine and time can.