our pack contains to many plodders and until we change where going to still have half backs that can't operate at there full potential, we get dominated in every tackle turned onto our backs so were like upside down turtles resulting in slow play the balls, you watch the likes of leeds saints wigan wire and there forwards are on there knees when tackle is complete ready for a quick play the ball, additionally a few of our forwards just have no leg drive at all they hit the 1st man and go down like a sack of sh*t.
Until we get some nasty bast*rds in our pack we won't dominate games.

By the looks of things , Cusack is going to be offered an extention to his contract. Thats fine by me as long as King ,Moa , Thackray and Radford are released and we spend abit of £ on a big go forward prop.

agree with that list apart from jamie thackray,as he is now starting to get back to his old playing self and as things stand deserves a new contract.

Agree with that but I think we will need TWO "big go forward props" !!

Assuming the Brent Kite signing comes off th pack will be stronger next season. The question is who should go?

Stay?

Cusack
Berrigan
Kite
Fitzgibbon
Tickle
Washbrook
Dowes
Maloney
Lauaki
Burnett
Manu
Houghton
Thackray

Go?

King
Radford
Moa
Lee

Even better.

We really need to "lose" three or four of our $hite forwards and bring in two quality ones but it's not going to happen because our coaches seem to love very average forwards and we seem to be stuck with them !!

Radford got yet another year without even playing a game this season !!








Can anyone at all please make any sense of that ??

Where you heard this from ?

Its a rumour. If one thing the last 3 or 4 years of signings has told me is that anyone we are rumoured to be signing we never do. We seem to do a good job of the announcement being the first we ever hear of it.

think he will be staying along with whiting

To be fair, the cowardly lion from the wizard of oz would add more agression to our pack

With our current 'gameplan' Agar should be playing 12 props so we can keep on relentlessly ploughing it up the middle.

Pretty happy with retaining Lee and Whiting. Lee deserves at least another year as he is one of the few players thats given huge effort/committment this season. Whiting is probs the best player for 'reading' the game and should develop into a great second rower...with the help of a quality coach..

Wouldn't retain:
Radford
G.Horne
Cusack
King
Motu (purely cos he still seems injured)

If we were getting the quick ptb's then we woul have more options in attacking the line as the defence would not be set. Ptb's really are the key to scoring points on most occasions.

Agree with pretty much all of that. Particularly the last paragraph.

It wasn't that long ago that Saints used to come to the KC for their annual butting. Now, we're happy with anything less than a 40 point mauling.

There are serious problems with our pack and these are obvious.

IMO our second rowers and props are far too similar (what is the difference in size, soeed etc between say tickle and dowes?) ie our second rowers are like our props when they should be more in the gilmour/wilkin mould and as has been discussed our props just aren't big enough. 1 workhorse with 3 big impact props would work really well but we just don't see to go for impact players and go for players like cusack and dowes who do their job well but we have to many players like this

Thought we was very much in the game till motu let the ball bounce and they scored of it then heads went down then it was game over !!!!!!!!!

That's part of the problem - heads dropping too easily. It wasn't game over when they scored that try, but it clearly was for the players. At least that was in the second half though so we're improving. Some games earlier in the season when the oppo scored that was it - we're beaten.

Spot on that. We need to invest in a permanent scout over in aussie. I'll do it for a few quid and report back. Job done.

It really annoys me when the opposition score and our heads go down, theirs no one trying to lift the lads in the huddle behind the sticks.

#

100% agree that we have no leader to fire the team up but i do think our fans could help more; if we really got behind the team when their heads go down i think we could make more of a difference

We haven't had this since Mr Mallison left for the dark side. Which also saw us become less agressive, less hungry, less passionate, have less desire and pride in the shirt, unifit and injury prone.

Thought it for a while that Billy was one of the guys who really ripped into them and got the best out of them, every time we conceded a try he was behind the post barking orders and dishing the dirt. Since he left, all of the above seemed to go with him.

Hate to say it but, look at the way Rovers aply themselves to the task in hand and how they seem to be able to remain fit and pretty much injury free.

I for one think Billy has a lot to do with this.

Wasn't mallinson around when we had horrendous injury problems under mcrae? And wasn't one of the main reasons for moving him on because of the injuries in 2007?