"Ordinary squad"? It was such a good post, too...

I guess you didn't bother to actually read the thread in question then

He wasn't in it.

It's not an outstanding squad if you go through it player by player. The strength of it is in the way the players fit together as a whole, and the way Morgan has them playing as a unit.

You don't need a superstar squad if you get the key positions right and you coach them well. Morgan is easily the most important factor in your success IMO.

i think him being the 10th worst import ever is very harsh, he was man on the match in every round of the CC for us for starters, and he may have made the difference in the final

and if they've missed Maivia off they've done very poor research, he was one of the poorest players i've ever seen in the black and white.

they've bought players in the correct positions, I woulden't say their and wingers are anything exciting...but it doesn't matter when they have Cooke and Dobson spreading quality balls out wide.

whereas Hull could have Offiah and Vainikolo in their prime on each wings and still struggle to give them the ball.

He was also VERY injury prone which we knew when when we signed him on big money and a quota place. He was a joke signing in the extreme !!!

exactly my point in the earlier post: Byrne, Cusack, Godwin and Tickle aren't bad players, and would do a job for someone in SL...but in a squad that already had 'workhorses' like Radford and Dowes, we needed someone different.

oh I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have done a proper medical and decided against it...

just saying its a bit harsh for RL world to be putting Dykes in a top10 worst signing category, because when he did actually play you could see he was a good player. There have been far more money grabbing overrated players to grace superleague.

Dykes was up front with th club before he came, I doubt there was anyone more surprised than him when his contract offer came through.

Yeh you're right but we were linked with a whole host of decent scum halves and Peter Blunt goes and signs someone who we all suspected, before he even got here, wouldn't play that much.

Just another example of our joke recruitment strategy of late.

I agree, but to say it's "ordinary" is harsh. From weakest link to strongest link our squad is up there with the best. Then add the team spirit the players seem to have and Justin Morgan's coaching, you can see why we could be top (or 1 point off) at the half way mark.

To put this post into perspective regardless of the majority of comments relating to the strengths and weaknesses of both clubs and what the long term and short term future holds:

People will always judge success on whats happening right now and will base future predictions on it, forget what may happen or what has happened in the past... its all about now

More importantly, you won't see a thread like this on the Rovers board, why? The club and fans are all commited to the cause of concentrating on the success of their own club in every department, not the rise or fall of any other club, local or not!

You have got to be kidding. The Rovers board is littered with Hull FC threads.

Not one to be found.

It's not an outstanding squad but it has many strengths that ours doesn't. As far as the word "ordinary" goes, there is only one squad in the city that could be labelled with such a word and it's not yours.

They will but we're looking at now and how the future will be if we continue as we are. The sad fact is that currently there isn't one player in our squad who would get into Rovers 17 assuming all of their squad was fit. And you know what they say if you keep doing what you've always done , you get what you've always had.
We need to change our recruitment policy pretty quickly and start being honest about what we've got which is a pretty ordinary squad , little prospect of home grown talent improving things and a poor coaching team that has already failed here and elsewhere. Once we do that then and only then can we hope to put in place a policy which has a chance of improving things.

Ordinary coaching set-up + ordinary squad of players = ordinary rugby + ordinary league position.

Isn't mathematics brilliant !!!!!

I think you're focussing too much on one word TBH. And I would disagree that your [isquad[/i is as good on paper as the likes of Saints, Leeds, or even Wire. Morgan has made the whole operate better than the sum of the parts, which is the sign of a good coach and also a sign of the correct attitude among the players.

We did much the same in 2006 in fact.

I agree, Rovers squad is more workmanlike than flair, what we do we do well, and so far it's working. We don't thrash many sides, but if an eight point win at the likes of Wigan keeps us at the right end of the table, then I can live with that.

Quite.

People seem to forget that when we went on our 13 match unbeaten run and ended up in the GF, we did it in similar fashion. There were a lot of narrow wins with the players playing for each other and never accepting the possibility of defeat.

Briscoe, Fox, Cooke, Dobson, Vella, Fozzard, Galea, Newton, Murrell is our spine. We have players who work there balls off around these players which is the key to our success this season thus far.

Add Fisher to that! We're a different team with him on the pitch, especially this year!

Dont go on there much, banned for some reason