At this point I can't see us challenging for trophies. I do think we'll improve on this season (I think that's impossible not to)
If we can keep Asiata on the field, then we'll be competitive, and maybe in with a shout of pushing for a sixth spot at the back end of the season.

We have a good balance of youth and experience in our squad for next season and some proper players in their proper positions (notably in the halves) that will improve us.

My hope is for the young homegrown talent we have to be demanding a place in the team from performances. If that happens, then that youthful energy alongside some experienced heads, should see us making strides to become a decent team again.

So while everyone is hoping we sign another centre, I'm hoping Davy Litten is playing well enough in there that he is the centre we want.

But right now, I don't think we have a pack of forwards or a set of backs that are gonna be bringing any trophies home.

Litten really needs to bulk up, he is very slight for a centre.

Definitely. There is a good player in there. But needs a run at centre and be consistent. Last year was pushed of the tackle far to easy. A good off season and bulk up and we may have a decent centre on our hands

He doesn't have much pace anyway, bulking up will slow him down further potentially

Believe one of the key focuses of pre season is improving players acceleration (and overall fitness of course).

Have seen him a few times in space.Hes certainly quicker than any centres we've have the last year or so. But at the weight he is now he's just not big enough. Saying that if he bulks up a bit there's no reason he will slow down. All ifs and buts ATM.

Never a centre
Another one who is bigged up only to end up in the lower divisions like several others.
We have two wings who are likely to make regular S/L players,
The jury is out on the rest

Never going to get in front of the two dynamic centres we have in Hardaker and Chamberlain

Think Litten would be the worst centre in the league. Just another overhyped Hull lad.

Hull Live have done some data analysis on the squad https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/r ... mp-9611364 What stands out for me is there's now only Sao, Lane and Fash who were there for the relatively successful 2020 season (and those 3 have come in for criticism) so there's barely anyone in the squad who can remember winning 2 or 3 games in the row, unless Briscoe has a great memory from 2012/2013! Shows the scale of the task Cartwright has with the culture

Hull Live have done some data analysis on the squad https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/sport/r ... mp-9611364 What stands out for me is there's now only Sao, Lane and Fash who were there for the relatively successful 2020 season (and those 3 have come in for criticism) so there's barely anyone in the squad who can remember winning 2 or 3 games in the row, unless Briscoe has a great memory from 2012/2013! Shows the scale of the task Cartwright has with the culture

fc callum - litten is only a kid that’s played in a well beaten team. His cousin jez was written off as not good enough or big enough and now look at him.
Davy has got fresh people on board to bring him on. Don’t write him off yet.
Ullfc -
Puzzled by your above post.
The club are bringing in around 9 or more new players. They have all come from winning and competitive cultures.
Add Martin and Barron Moy who clearly showed they were keen to get stuck in.
That’s almost a full team.
So really don’t see your point.
Yes there’s a lot of hard work ahead but Leigh and kr have shown it can be done.

Anyway, on another positive note I renewed my pass today.
Looking forward to next season , even more so once Wigan beat those pesky dobbins.

My point was almost all the squad have been at the club less than 3 years, in those years we've been dreadful so there's barely anyone who knows what it's like being at a sucessful club anymore. That will be a challenge for Cartwright.

Only Asiata, Hardaker and Holmes have seen sucess recently the rest are coming from clubs missing the playoffs.

Sorry I’m glass half full type.
Rapana, sezer , cust, briscoe , chamberlain and the much maligned Abdul have all experienced finals and play off games. Get them fit and well conditioned, no reason why the team can’t go well next season.
SL standard has been poor apart from Wigan, Wire and kr.

if another 3 or 4 clubs and i expect st helens to be one of them could join the party next year you would have a really competitive league and not as predictable as it has been for most of the season,it can be done, would be more exiting being the best team on the day rather than knowing youll win or lose

As a club we have to stay as a grade A or high B rated club.

I assume the club has kept on top of the social media and community side of things, the stadium side we score highly on but at the moment there’s no real scope for improvement there as far as I’m aware.

So as realistic targets you’d say that on the pitch you’d hope we get off to decent start and continue to play well enough to stop a mass exodus of fans and keep at the 7.5K average attendance threshold that we score high on now.

I’m not right up on the criteria so anyone who is, what improvements results wise in 25 would make us score more on the criteria for 26? Or is the on field performance stuff just over 3 years? If say we did manage an 8th place finish would we score any higher?

I think we actually lose points on the stadium over the capacity and attendance difference .

Makes sense, what’s the cut off figure? I know in 2023 the club posted an average attendance of around 12.5k off the top of my head which would put us around 50% of the stadium, but we’d have got the grade A off 22 figures that I’m sure was lower?

Also I’ve never seen it confirmed but people have said that IMG gradings are based on actual attendances not the figure the club announces. Obviously the club announced 9K for the Salford/Catalan games but it was obviously much lower, that could have an impact.

Regardless of how the gradings are scored, it would be nice to be going into the big home games next season with clubs who bring a lot of away fans if we are playing well enough to attract some floating fans rather then just the bare minimum who’ve already paid for a season ticket.

For me I'd say 6th is realistic with this team and coaching setup. You could argue Salford and Leigh have over achieved this year and neither have signed anyone special to help them stay in the top six so I think we're capable of replacing them. The key thing is we need to be beating them in the regular season

I don't know how IMG go about grading as it seems to be still a grey area but It does seem strange that a large first class stadium looses points whilst we have the forth best attendance average in SL .

Leigh have signed Armstrong and Nui that could be real special players at SL level in the backline, and I assume they have a quota spot to replace Moylan they seem to have a knack of coming up with good imports. They’ve lost a big chunk of the pack though.

Don’t disagree that Leigh and Salford on paper might not be too far away from us, but we’ve also got Leeds and Catalan who will look to improve massively. I think we’d need a huge chunk of luck in our favour and relying on others having bad luck/bad seasons to make to make the play offs IMO. If nothing else we are a bit of luck though.

Think I would describe that as optimistic rather than realistic. Saints and Catalans finished 6th/7th this year with 15 wins each (think Wire may have been the same in 2023?).
For us to go from 3 wins up to 15 is a sizable improvement in a single year, especially with virtually a new set-up and team at the start of the year. Will we need a 'bedding-in' time before we see improvements?

I don't think it's impossible for us to finish 6th, but I do think we would need a number of factors to go our way for it to happen. If the likes of Leigh, Leeds, Salford are inconsistent and we can make significant improvements then maybe 6th would come to pass, but I'm not sure we will find an extra 10-12 wins on this season that we would need to make.

Recall I made the same claim for us finishing 6th at the start of this year (based on the same premises as above) only to see it spectacularly blow up in my face before we had even reached Easter!! So I am a touch wary about sticking my neck out that far again!!

I hope you are proved to be right in this, it would certainly put some much needed feel-good factor back into the faithful, but having been burnt too often in recent years I'm erring on the side of caution on this. I just feel 6th is too big a step upwards in one move, especially given where we are starting from (almost rock bottom).

When you say we’ll lose points, do you mean we’ll lose points from the initial awarding because our attendances have dropped since and now under 50% (or whatever the cut off point is) usage of the stadium or just that we didn’t get the points in the first place?

If it’s that we didn’t get the points in the first place I wouldn’t worry, we scored highly on the stadium and enough to get a grade A despite scoring low for on the field performance. If we have a team that’s in an around competing near the play offs (most accept that as a realistic expectation) everything else should look after itself. Just hope they’ve done enough to make us competitive.

Id class realistic progress as being able to leave work at 3pm on a Friday before travelling over the Pennines with at least some confidence it won't be a wasted visit

Does anyone know what our scoring was in each criteria? I know the overall score but did it ever get broken down? I have listed below the max scores of the criteria's.

Fandom: 5
Performance: 5
Finances: 4.5
Stadium: 3
Community: 2.5

So the max score is 20 and you need 15 for a Grade A licence. We scored 15.05 so we're on the edge of Grade A and we're bound to have lost performance points after this abysmal season but have we possibly done enough in the other criteria's to gain what we lose on the performance side?

Given how we just scraped in last year, I think it's fairly likely we will lose our Grade A status