Read a really interesting article by Brian Smith on his website recently addressing why some teams struggle to be creative in attack.

His argument emphasised the importance of coaching - less in terms of creating plans - but in simulating game like situations in training for players to develop both their creative skills and decision making without being slated for their mistakes. Mistakes simply lead to more practice until the creative skills and decision making improve and are hard wired giving confidence to perform under pressure.

This sounds obvious in a way but makes you think about our team. Last Saturday, you could see an almost hard wired confidence in our defence, while it was obvious there was no confidence at all in attack, even though we clearly do have players with potential to be skilful and creative.

There has to be a reason for this, and following Smithies argument it is hard to look past coaching or training methods, instead of people's natural tendencies to say we should change personnel again(!) or that our forwards were dominated when they were not.

Completely wrong. We have scored less tries than Castleford, wakefield and widnes, none of whom have better packs than us. Even poor sides can be creative if they're organised. I'm not surprised that gentle did his coaching apprenticeship at the club which has relied on the creativity of benji marshall for the last decade or so but when he doesn't fire they're poor

You're deluding yourself if you think our pack is better than Wakefield's. I'm not convinced it's been better than the other two's this year either.

On paper means feck all, and I've seen our pack bossed by all three of those teams at least once this year.

OK, well you continue to believe you're right but one day you'll come round to my way of thinking just like you have on everything else I've been right about in the past

Thought this was about why the hell we never took the goal kicks offered .
From the off could of been 2 up .
If we would of took them been another game but with our best kicker on the field we turned every one down only to loose the ball second tackle.

I'm incapable of stupidity Jake, so you may be waiting a while.

Is that an oxymoron?

It depends, what do you think an oxymoron is?

I have confidence in the two halves but they do need to improve their communication and the roles they each play. Stick Horne with either one of them and you immediately have a better balance as Horne brings a running game and makes us more direct. Miller and DJ are often too similar but, they have not played together much so it should improve.

ok ive bit ,whats an oxymoron

A cow wearing a hoody

Someone stupidly typing that they're incapable of stupidity? Is your genius in English or something useful?

Dim kid with acne

I'm not sure about that, and even if so it's still not that odd. As I said before the game, we have 2 fit halfbacks and a fit fullback, we don’t have another fit centre, so it was a case of having to gamble on Crooks, not being happy to. The only other option would have been to play Whiting there, which would have made our pack even worse. Had Arundel been ok I’d have gone with him, personally.

What I didn't expect was that Crooks would forget how to catch a ball in his absence.

Agree about that. I'm also sick of seeing us continually tee Westerman and Tickle up for crash balls at the line no matter what the conditions or how often they drop it. After a certain point it's not just their fault.

With what we have signed up for next year, I'd personally go with Ellis & Westerman in the 2nd row, Pitts at loose, and Whiting on the bench.

That's been our problem for the last 5 years. I've said it before, if a coach could crack that for us we'd make more progress from that one improvement than all others possible combined.

The truth is that Gentle selected the team that most people on here last week wanted him to pick.

Most people were excited at the prospect of Crooks returning
Not many people wanted Horne to play.
Nearly everyone thought that Shaul should play FB and that Miller and Holdsworth should be the halves.
Hardly anyone said Green should be in the 17.

It was the right team and a good enough team to win but the players failed to deliver.

Agree 100%.

I think Saturday was the closest I've ever been to 'can't blame the coach for that one'. He was let down badly, and not just by one or two, or just the kids, there were established pros out there who just weren't good enough on the day.

Well said

Excellent post.

Same here , Gentle looked lost for words at that shambles after the game , Also we never seem to just have one player making these errors , It's right across the board .

spot on feathers

Its because we're a close knit team. Great together and sh*t together.

Sadly, rather too much of the latter and not enough of the former this season.

Ain't that the truth!!