You're all going to have to put up better arguments than that to prove how Horne's apparently carried us for majority of the year.

Great, it's fantastic that our player playing the most pivotal position in the team is joint top on try assists at round 13. However I highly doubt we'd be lurking in the bottom four if it wasn't for Horne's influence. Fine, I'll give you that he's found a bit of form, but just because every single of his punts down-field aren't finding the fullback on the full any more and he's created a few tries, suddenly Horne's this Sinfield-esque general playmaker, or this perfect support player to play alongside Holdsworth (whichever way you view it). He's suddenly a legend of the club, and him going through the motions for the past 5 or 6 years is justified. There's nothing that Horne's done this year that can't be done comfortably by another capable halfback given the promise that the rest of the squad has.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love Horne to succeed. I'd love him to be able to be this perfectly complimentary player alongside Holdsworth. I'd love him to be a main pivotal component while we're challenging the top teams at the latter stages of the season in the playoffs. But my point is, I wouldn't prefer it to be him over any other player. Which can't be said in regards to a lot of our fellow Hull fans. This clouds their judgement. How much people revered Horne's "man of the match performance" against Rovers is an example of this. Yes Horne made a few promising runs and looked safe at times in the game, but he also was responsible for a few errors that Rovers then went on to score tries from, such as his knock-on near our try-line and stupidly and unnecessarily letting the ball roll into the in-goal resulting in a dropout which they then went on to score from on something like the 2nd tackle.

This vitriolic response is also exaggerated (as well as Horne's performances) due to people's need to feel like they have to protect Horne, and what he stands for when you consider local pride and such. No doubt some of the fickle ones of the bunch I've quoted above will agree with me once his form drops again, but some people remain only fans of Horne himself and will still continue to make all kinds of wild excuses for him ceasing to create tries any more: such as him not having a suitable organising halfback partner alongside him so he can have free-reign (I wouldn't class Heremaia as an organising halfback. He doesn't seem to be directing play to that much of an effect to make the claim that he is, so where does that argument stand now?). If he's "carried us for the full year" with his usual support play and elusive running, then wouldn't he be on the receiving end of tries and not creating them thus reflecting in his total tries, and not his try assists stat? It follows then that if people are saying he's "carried us for the full year" and this reflects in his try assists stat, then surely they're also saying he's now suitable to call the shots and doesn't need free reign any more, or a suitable organising halfback partner? I'll be looking forward for when this argument pops up again after a dip in form.

You can throw around petty insults all you like but I'm looking at this objectively, and I still don't see Horne doing what I've just said I'd love him to be able to do, and that's pretty much deduced to fulfilling the role at halfback to the calibre of consistent performance that our club deserves.

I know this has gotten quite long-winded, so it might seem that this is an attack on Horne as a person. It isn't. The point is, I just want us to challenge the top teams for silverware, so I'm saying we need something extra and we deserve it.



To get back on topic, I think most people see that Houghton sacrifices a lot of the excitement in his game that he used to have attacking (with his scoots, etc) for defence nowadays. We do look laboriously slow at the play the ball and around the ruck in some games. I think it's because of this. When Heremaia switches back to 9 I think we'll start to see improvement around that area (as he gets us moving at dummy half and I think has better distribution than Houghton) and we'll start to see the best of both worlds.

The problem is that the nrl and union have a cap double that of rugby league, this gives them the opportunity to poach the best players from our competition. Next year there are already some big names heading to the nrl...how many more to follow. Also our clubs now have little chance of bringing in any quality Australians because they can get paid alot more back home. While this maybe great for the up coming youngsters who will now get a game, in the big picture, can super league survive. Crowds are dwindling, sponsorship seems to be very hard to come by, and the people steering the ship seem to have few answers

On the other hand, very few clubs could afford any increase in the cap, so you'd either get even more of a gulf/monopoly than there already is or clubs going pop as rapidly as bubble wrap through a mangle.

There is only one answer, and it's to produce more players through the youth systems. The only questions are whether this can be done enough, and how in the hell scaling back to the 19s system will help to achieve that?

Basically no club apart from Leeds can survive without a sugar daddy so just bloody scrap the cap and let the sugar daddys pay for the best players before SL is just a league of players nobody else wants.

Horne
Crooks
Lineham

Horne
Westerman
Crooks