This is the first real chance I've had to post after Fridays game against Cas and it never fails to annoy me how all the moaning threads suddenly appear after a loss and any weakness in a players game suddenly becomes magnified.

Make no mistake we were poor as a team on Friday night. This can be attributed to lots of things but personally I think it was a combination of attitude (thinking it wouldn't be as difficult as previous games this season - compounded by scoring in the first couple of minutes) and the fact we started with Berro on the bench. The reason our pack is going so well is down to the direction of Berro at the PTB and the way he puts forwards running at gaps. We were poor up front on Friday and this put us on the back foot a lot of the time.

Having said that we still did enough to win the game IMO and had Tickle been as reliable as usual with the boot we would have won the game. A team that plays as poorly as we did and still out-scores the opposition in terms of trys must be doing something right. We just seemed to lose our heads a bit at pivotal moments in the game. R.Horne going for a drop goal with 15 minutes on the clock was a mistake, it gave Cas the belief to go on and win it as it showed we were weak and trying to hang on for a win with 15 minutes left to play. We then didn't take the opportunity for a drop goal with about 5 minutes left and tried to run it. Cas then went up the other end and slotted the drop goal over. Then again on the last tackle we run it instead of taking the 1 point. These are the moments in games that seperate the good players from the great players.

We have had a great start to the season and I'm sure the positivity from the fans has been helping repair some of the lost confidence of the players from last season. This was just a blip IMO so lets give them the chance to put things right at the weekend before dissecting every little error and flaw to all of our players. I'm hoping that this has been the reminder the players needed that they need to work hard in every match because we've proved so far that this season that hard work can somtimes make up for a lack of quality.

Finally, well done to Cas. It was a great win for them. I dont agree that they deserved to win the game but they took the points and thats what matters.

agree with pretty much all of that

What an excellent post, we are going to play for poorly this season and get beat, people have to accept that. The effort was there on Friday, we just didnt use our brains.

The big test will be how we react to this defeat on Saturday.

Agree with the post but I don't think many people have been overly critical of the players at all since the weekend. Discussion about players' strengths and weaknesses happens all the time. The most critical person has been Agar after the game [iand quite rightly so[/i. The performance was below par due to the mistake rate but we almost won anyway. Keep the team the same and do better this weekend.

sums it up for me andy,like i said in a post on friday after the game,if we had won nothing would of been said,just like in the previous 5 weeks,all good when the lads are winning soon as we lose people get on there backs and start finding the negatives,the players will be back to prove a point this weekend,im sure the coaching staff will have them fired up.

Top post Robbo.

Had a thought...my view was that we looked tired and possibly a few players were feeling effects of keeping the same team virtually all year.

would you change a winning team to keep it fresh or keep with same team to keep continuity?

Maybe he kept same team as he possibly thought others werent quite up in fitness levels yet, which should be rectfiied over next week or two now reserves are up n running. should have King, Washbrook, Maloney at least in contention if not this week but next.

You're just too sensible Robbo....Moan like the rest of em.

Good post. If we'd been offered 10 pts from 6 games we'd have taken it. I think we also forget that the Agar/Sharp regime is still in its infancy and i for one hope we keep improving at the same rate we have been. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Great post Robbo. Nice to see good reflection on our situation.

We were going to lose a game eventually, and have a bad day at the office- we all have bad days at work.

What['s important now is how the players respond to a defeat, that's the sign of a really good team. If the players and staff get too caught up in the errors of the previous week, or in thinking "we should have won that one", or blaming individual players, they risk taking their eyes off the challenges of this weekend and the general steady development of the team which has been taking place since the off season.

Teams like Leeds and Saints have in recent years responded positively to defeats and come out stronger, which probably has kept them as the two top teams. By contrast, Warrington have reacted badly to defeats and appear to have let them get to them (especially the close results- be it at Saints last year- or Saints in CC season before, or indeed at Saints at the beginning of this season), and managed to turn a close loss into a series of defeats.

I'm confident that our coaching staff is level headed on this and will reassure the boys in what they are doing and trying to achieve. Jon Sharpe in particular has a good track record on this. Remember the start of the 07 season which was loss after loss but all close- and he insisted it was about performance. In the end, he was proven right with Fartown reaching the playoffs.

Its not getting beat its the way you respond to the defeat thats important, if we reproduce the form of the first 5 games a victory on Saturday is a distinct possibility.

Well said!

I've not exactly took a trip to negative town since Friday (well, except during half hour after the game

) but if players play bad, they deserved to be criticised for it, despite the fact they have played well beforehand. Just like if players are crap for most of the season then they have a good game, they should be praised

Thats what some on here fail to understand. If a player doesnt play well we are all entitled to voice opinions of what they didnt do well and what they could have done better. Some on here seem to think that means we are picking on players and going negative etc etc. It really doesnt. It simply means we are having opinions doesnt it? (although some on here can get pretty vindictive against certain players too)

Exactly. For example, I thought R.Horne was poor on Friday and I would criticise him for that despite his good form previous. In fact probably more so as for me it was a large drop in the quality of his performance. Switch round to G.Horne who I feel has been very poor this season (although not aided by the fact he doesn't get too much good ball, I've moaned about that too much though) but there were aspects of his game that were very good on Friday. His first try was an excellent example of good quick thinking for example.

Couldn't agree more. Some on here seem unable to accept 'middle ground' debate. I haven't said that we were brilliant on Friday and I haven't said we were sh[ii[/ite. Some players played better than others and that's been commented on and argued/discussed. It doesn't mean that everyone is being negative after one game in the same way that reasoned praise after previous games doesn't mean everyone is suddenly expecting a GF win.

Quite. I haven't noticed anyone being overly negative. Even bighead hasn't reared his ugly (big) head.