Try a pint of very strong cider, always works for me , although I dont really like cider

Five Stella consumed and heading shortly to the Groves Inn for some hand pulled bitter.
I may get a few more down before this afties 3-38pm train back to Ull.
Quite like this Clayton hotel. It's fanny central.
Hen nights just arrived at the bar.
The Groves might have to wait. ☺

We have to remember that two years ago we'd been well beaten at home by Leeds in the Challenge Cup quarter finals. We then limped into the top eight by winning at Craven Park in round 22 before being hammered at home by Wigan and we then went on to lose six out of seven Super 8 matches and finished fourteen points off the top four.

Back to back Cup wins and two third place finishes since then is terrific progression.

Brian McDermot said that was the best 25 minutes Leeds have played for a very, very long time. That we came back to be only 6 behind at the break is a credit to the endeavour the players put in. That we put ourselves in front shows how good a side we are.
However mistakes were made - thought Shaul could have done better for Ward's try were he just looked and did nothing to stop it, was one that stood out in the first half, but there were plenty of others that do need looking at (Tackling for their last try was very poor) and no doubt will be looked at so that we can be better in the future.

The effort was outstanding, Ellis running down Walker in the second half was incredible but just execution was lacking at times, the last 10 minutes we just did not control things as we should have (As Radford mentioned), against a side like Leeds you can't afford to do that.

Whilst Leeds were superb that first 25 minutes you can't help but wonder if how we played that first segment was in any way influenced by the team only getting to the ground an hour before kickoff, it certainly can't have helped what with all the pressure of the game being there in any case. why you would want to leave it so late to leave on a Friday afternoon is anyone's guess but that needs to be addressed as a matter of course.

Very positive season, some disappointments of course but then it wouldn't be Hull FC if it was all perfect.

It really is. Minimal changes too, low single-digit changes to the squad - that's crucial if we are to sustain the momentum and team spirit. Paea was a very popular squad member and Ellis is obviously staying in the set-up with Hadley and Abdull also returning. Excited to see Faraimo too, given we've been pursuing him for years.

After the performances of the team in the first 2 years of Radford’s tenure he was deserving of the sack, he showed nothing to say he was good enough to be a coach in super league.

Way too simplistic - performance on the field was never going to happen overnight.
Changes behind the scenes were a major factor in the success we are now enjoying.

His 2nd season (2015) wasn't that bad, had a lot of injuries and played a lot of young kids in the 8's and put in some good performances, showed signs for things to come and kicked on from there in 2016

Another good season positives for me

Super 8's performance
Winning the cup
Young players coming through and looking the part
Our attacking play, improved on 2016.
Coping with big game players missing, particularly Ellis and Houghton

Two big areas of improvement

Home form
Stop blow away scores.

Solid recruitment for 2018, looking forward to it again.

Agreed. In a recent interview he said when he started the job he knew what he wanted to change and how he would do it. Pearson supported him and it came through. I was a bit twitchy in his first season but always really liked Radford as a bloke so helped patience

Thank you Hull FC for a great season. Pity we just fell short at the last hurdle, but we are up there now and need to keep the momentum going next year. Two CC wins in a row is a brilliant launch pad for 2018.

Agree on the areas of improvement, we need to make the KCOM a fortress again. Also need to grow crowds as we seem to have hit a plateau of 10k and it's not obvious why more aren't turning out (maybe worth the club spending some money on market research) getting another 1 or 2k in would really help the atmosphere.

Blow out scores are a bit of a mystery as you can put some down to under estimating the opposition like Leigh at home. But we also didnt turn up for big games like Saints at the Magic Weekend. We need to find a level where we get the win but not go all out and be tired for the week after. It still feels a bit 'all or nothing' with the performances most of the time.

Our home form has been worse than our away form for the last 2 years. If it were consistently better I'm sure the crowds would improve

We will miss Fonua for sure but he does miss tackles and last night came up with five errors.
Not sure that will be good enough for success in the NRL so i wouldnt be surprised to see him back in two or three years.
Our fitness and effort on the field is second to none but you are correct our attack particularly in the opposition 20 needs attention as we rely almost entirely on a sneyd kick on the last tackle.
We attack too deep with players passing the ball backwards sometimes as much as five or six metres which is easy for the opposition to defend.
If you watch the Catleford/Saints game then our match last night this is really highlighted and makes the Castleford attack look slick and our attack slow.
Im sure Radford can see this but it does need attention.
Still gutted from last night as i dont think we will get a better chance of a Grand Final victory than this season with Ellis in the team.
Had no doubt we would have beaten Castleford in the final

Good summary. I'm not as certain as you that we would have won, but Ellis has been such a talismanic influence for us we'd have had a great shout. Our creativity does need to improve - we've scored some great tries this year but as you say mainly from kicks or individual play from Shaul or Kelly but not enough of them. One of the big positives for me is that our pack generally is strong and despite the loss of Ellis we have Paea coming in, Hadley returning, Fash as a geniune SL player and our current 4 props all approaching what should be their peak years.

For me there is one little change we have to make that would make our attack 10 times more dangerous.

Get Shaul to be 4 or 5 yards further forward when we spread the ball along the line.

He is always stood far too deep any gaps in the defence are easily closed before he gets there. This means moves come to a sudden halt and he ends up running backwards to look for gaps.

Top defences can handle this easily.

Hull are not far far reaching or winning a GG for me. The key thing I think not reaching Wembley next year. It's great to win the CC but bloody hard to back up and go for the GF. Either this year or last you I think you could've gotten to the GF if not for Wembley:

As much as Hull talked about focusing on the GF this year it was clear you still put a lot into the cup games.

All in all after the disappointment of last nights result as we were so close and feels it was a missed opportunity I still think the season has been a good one. It's shows how far we've come under the ownership of Adam Pearson when we as fans feel a little disappointment.
As others have said we need to improve our attacking plays as we are too predictable at times and rely on our defence to get us out of jail at times. We need to improve our discipline as we invite teams by giving them easy yards from poor mistakes and penalties. Support play and dummy runners is something else we lack along with consistency.
One of the areas I think really needs work on which would benefit us greatly in attack is not going 20-25 metres deep from the ptb. As more often than not we make little ground by doing so as we give the opposition too much time to get the defence in place which nullifies any threat. As has been said look at Cas, Sts and even Leeds they run a much flatter line but all move up at pace as a unit which makes it much harder to defend against due to less time and space to react.
All in all not massive issues but more fine tuning and building on what has brought success so far. I think the appointment of an attacking coach will be a useful acquisition for Radders and the team

The problem as such is that if you sack off the cup, which is a more realistic target requiring 4 wins, you put all your eggs in a basket months away. You could deliberately put less into the cup and have loads of injuries in September scuppering either chance of silverware. It's probably been exacerbated for Hull in that last year our cup run was all the other 4 of the top 5 and this year included Cas, Wigan and Leeds so highly draining (in fact, apparently, we've only faced non top tier opposition twice in 6 years in the cup), but the principle remains.

Challenge Cup still major target, our trophy to defend next year AGAIN so fully expect 100% effort.

Were unlucky this year with fixtures around it, Leeds on Thursday an absolute joke. Had we beaten them prior to Wembley & had a winnable game more than 5 days after Wembley then second could still have been on.

If's & But's what keeps the game exciting though !!

Just woke this morning from an awful nightmare. There I was, sat in the Skyrack, Friaday at 16-30, enjoying my second pint of Green King IPA, when we were approached by Calendar News team. Gave an interview for the 18-00 news programme and said we’d stay in touch till half time and smash them in the second. Just rang our kid, he said it really happened, yep that numpty was me!!!!!
I really thought it would be a repeat of the CC Semi. This season has been another great journey, if FC can get performances on field to consistently high standard, which to me, has to be the next step, we can become the force every fan wants them to become. As for questioning Radford’s tenure in the early stages, most fans were peed off up to halftime at Craven Park and were probably off on one but the boys turned it round and the rest as they say is history. Try to enjoy the off season and an amnesty with a certain poster, Tony really is a nice bloke and a genuine supporter.
Hope Cas smash String o Beads next Saturday, would loved it to be us there but heyho

I don't agree, having to win 4 games without slip up, no second chances is harder than getting through to the play-offs and having to win only 2 games.. You can afford to lose, you can have injuries through the season or go off the boil and still make the play-offs, we proved that this season, we've being gash in parts, we lost TWELVE games out of 30 and still made the play-offs. It's then only a 2 game knockout comp. We played the top teams both last season and this to win the CC so it's no different to playing the 2 games in the play-offs to win the GF except you have to beat potentially 4 top SL teams to win the CC. IMHO winning the CC is harder if you get a really difficult draw than winning 2 games at the end of the play-offs.

To win the Grand Final you need to win at least 18 games.

Pray tell, what part of the AUP does Mrs B break when she is negative during a game?

You yourself and others admitted that she posted the same thing to bait posters and to elicit comment, that's the definition of trolling.
HTH

Not at all. If you, and only you, wishes to take umbrage at Mrs B's negative posts during the game, then that is your issue. No one else does because they see them for exactly what they are and that's a defence mechanism when stressed. You have been told this many times yet still insist on making something out of it every blooming week. That is not against the AUP. Some of the abuse you receive because if it is and I try to deal with that, but in the same way I have told my kids when bickering, if you don't like something, ignore it. You're an adult, act like it.