I'm perfectly aware of the point he's trying to make, just highlighting a few of the strengths of the opposition to try and illustrate why a bit of old fashioned bollock-grabbing and tit-tweaking is not going to be enough to beat a good side like that, especially when you're still trying to work out what you want to do with the ball yourselves.

Even good teams need time to find themselves again when faced with big changes. For all the nastiness of Bailey and his partners in crime, Leeds were tripe when McDermott took over. At one stage, they even looked doubtful for the play offs, but went on to win the GF. Do you think they managed this by cranking up the thuggery level an extra notch or two, discovering a bit more "mongrel", or by learning to play the way the new coach wanted them to? It didn't happen overnight, even though they went pretty well in all their pre-season friendlies...

there is plenty of mongrels in belle vue every week, by the looks of some of them they breathe through their gills .

They can't all be pretty boys like you can they?

its just a case of looking normal

some of them i would hesitate to leave near children

when Mutants attack

btw who is that bald guy who stands behind the duggouts. always comes out with some belting comedy comments.

had a special case stood behind me on sunday , some dude whispering come on trin my ear i nearly phoned the police for assault

Think thats the bloke that Beans fell out with.

Seems to me that TRB has completely changed character lately. makes me wonder whats changed, the guy would go to the end of the earth to defend what most would consider indefensible in recent seasons when we have been playing much worse than we currently are. Regardless of how down in the dumps affairs on and off the field where, the club, players and coaching staff would have been defended to the hilt, with plenty of reasoning offered as to why things wouldn't ever really improve until we got a stadium and as a Trinity fan all we could reasonably expect was to be scratching about towards the bottom of the league. Even when we was playing some terrible stuff and moral was at an alltime low it was always phrases like "silk purse out of sows ears" and "rome wasnt built in a day" and the war cry would go out, but just lately when most reasonable fans are getting pretty much what we expected with a whole new squad of players and a whole new coaching set up, its a different story.

Can't put my finger on whats different now compared to then, but something must have..... Maybe an axe to grind because no crumbs are being swept off the top table for feeding on perhaps?

what a legend

he could be having a sympathetic man period.

I think the stats showed we had more play the balls and more possession in their 20. What we couldn;t do was break them down often enough to make use of that advantage. That to me doesn't sound like a team who aren't giving their all. More a team not yet cohesive enough or composed enough to overcome a very good top of the table team, one which as RR says has been developing over the last 2/3 years. I just can't agree with your and TRB's assessment of the game/players. The Giants are a better team with very good line defence which we couldn't break down. We did OK sunday and there is definitely something there to build on

The team are giving their all, they just aren't playing well enough.

Well if we shipped in 36 points by giving our all I Hate to think how many we will let in on a can't be harris day.

The scoreline wasn't a fair reflection of the game in my view - 12 of those points were walk-ins from dubious refereeing decisions, marching them downfield at a crucial time in the game.

We were beaten, but we weren't comprehensively outplayed.

As I said at the start of the season Amor is a big big player for us, the sooner he's back the better.

It's a pity we couldn't have scraped a win amongst those defeats we have just suffered if only for the sake of maintaining the impressive attendances this season. 'Supporters' are fickle and I daresay some will already be thinking twice about returning to Belle Vue to see more of the same. Hope I'm wrong because the atmosphere at Belle Vue with 7000+ in the ground is great. I suppose the way to look is forward -we can't alter what has happened-just learn from it and improve!
At least when we play Catalans we may have another stand to admire, my attention may drift to that if the game isn't going well-like it did towards the electronic ads (Bradford game) that I assume were only for tv purposes!

Many of us on here will moan but still go week after week,year after year. However refreshing it is to see all the newbies at the ground my fear is they won't put up with many more defeats. Thats why I don't accept all this giving them a season to gel argument. Unless we turn it around pretty quickly the team may undo all the good work of Glover and Elston.

Thats a big worry, like you say we'll still turn out and it would be a shame if gates dropped, we have missed the best chance of getting a win for a while IMO.

What did you think would happen? That Glover would stump up for a brand new team and they'd win everything straight from the off, just because he paid a lot of money for it?

In the same way that we didn't ship 36 points against Huddersfield, no one has asked for a season for the team to "gel". Most sensible supporters think that it's reasonable to give the coach and the team half a season, by which time they'll have played every team in the league once, to judge where this newly assembled squad is going.

I agree wholeheartedly- A couple of wins will make the world of difference- The 'buzz' will continue, but I expect the crowds to fall if we continue along similar lines. I will still be there though as for 50 odd years. If I feel like moaning I try and remember some of the rubbish I watched before a crowd of barely 1200 when we were in the old second division! Those weren't the days!

It's not about excepting, it's just a bit of common sense that you can't throw a team of new faces together and expect them to beat everyone right off the bat, obviously you think different.

In the next six games we play, Wire,Catalan,London,Cas,Wigan,Salford. Now if we loose all these games i will begin to worry because at least three of these games are defo winnable. As long as we take no hidings off teams, and so far we havent, il be happy. All we need to be is clinical in there twenty and be able to unlock there defence, the amount of possesion we have had is unreal on teams lines.

We let in fewer points against the top club than Wigan did against the bottom.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Wigan full strengh would of pumped widnes big time, just like every other team has this year.

For 10 years I was placed in a very difficult position and yes, sometimes I said things on here that I tried to believe myself but maybe didn't always.

This thread doesn't seek to single out anyone person for blame - I am not critical of either Andrew or James, but perhaps a little bit towards Agar - purely based on results, or lack of.

Along with everyone else on here I agree that the two glaring weaknesses are at Prop and a goal kicker, but otherwise the point is that we have to, IMO, make these players hurt more, to toughen them up as a unit and to try and instil in them a spirit of not accepting defeat as an inevitable consequence, but that, as 'jack' put it, we make the opposition work overtime to beat us.

The answer to most problems comes from within an individual or group of individuals. The onus now, for the sake of everything that has been done to keep us alive and give us all new hope, is on the coaching and playing staff to play their part in the re-building process and, for me at least, nothing less than victory - especially in our home games - should be acceptable, without it, Andrew will just be wasting his money and he deserves better than that!

How was that erasure concert you and ted went to, you never said

Great post, TRB. Totally agree.

I hope you're reading this Richie Mathers. If you don't have a skin graft on those knees before the end of the season, you won't have tried hard enough, and can bugger off back to Cas, or whoever will take you, you waster. Same goes for you, Amor... broken what? One of Bren's U13s played a whole game with a broken summat... two broken summats, in fact, and did he complain?? And Collis... sort yourself out, you wimp. Twinge in the leg? Run it off man... Sod all this "gelling" stuff, just give it a bit of biff, and the results will soon come. Otherwise Andrew will have wasted his money, and that's all your fault, Ted.... err, I mean Richard. What were you thinking of... "new structures"... "game plans"... don't you know that's all "puffball" stuff? One up rugby, a bit of gouging when the ref can't see it, and we'll be there or thereabouts, and the fans will love it, just like they loved the no compromise, one-up rugby under JK. Christ, what do they teach coaches these days?



Yours, Smithy