You're right, this is a daft thread. To which you've heavily contributed. Are you willing to take your share of the blame? I doubt it.

Guilty.





Anyway in the unlikely event you want to find us later we will be in the hotel bar. I will be the one with the glass half full and Gary...

....Probably spilled his when he read the latest Agar "stating the bleeding obvious cr*p" in the HDM!

No idea. He was hardly the only player to suffer from the 'FC injury curse' and I'm not sure we're any closer to figuring out why now than we were then. We've had injury issues under three different conditioners and four coaches.

Fortunately I was at a seminar in Manchester all day yesterday so I missed that. I went to the JJB last night though, so I'm actually in a pretty good mood having seen some proper rugby being played for the first time in god knows how long. It's amazing what a bit of decent coaching can do....

I sometimes wondered if it had anything to do with the firmness of the KC pitch but Wigan and Huddersfield never seemed to suffer like we did

Not to mention two squads packed full of international standard players.

You mean like the one Cullen had in his last 2 or 3 years at Wire and couldn't get anywhere near winning anything? Besides, one of Wire's standout performers for me last night was Blythe, and then you've got the likes of Briers and Westwood who Smith has transformed at a relatively late stage in their careers into twice the players that they used to be.



Obviously Wigan and Wire's squads do look dodgy in terms of salary cap, but it's really not worth bringing up unless they ever get found guilty of a breach.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that the coach doesn't make a difference. Easier to make that difference when you have better players to work with though.





It's worth bringing up because until we find a way to assemble a squad of similar quality we are not going to truly compete. A better coach will narrow the gap but not close it IMO.

That's a fair point, but Leeds seem to manage it and nobody has ever accused them of breaching the cap AFAIK.

IIRC Kevin Sinfield said once that many of the Leeds squad acknowledged that they could earn more at other clubs but were happy to be part of a successful club.

Indeed, it was in his on-pitch interview after their last GF win.