Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 1:19 pm  

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/rugby/view/297908/ Was this designed as motivation for today's game? I would imagine that Brown has drawn it to the attention of the likes of Wilkin and Wellens!

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/rugby/view/297908/ Was this designed as motivation for today's game? I would imagine that Brown has drawn it to the attention of the likes of Wilkin and Wellens!

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:33 pm  

SomersetSaint wrote:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/rugby/view/297908/

Was this designed as motivation for today's game? I would imagine that Brown has drawn it to the attention of the likes of Wilkin and Wellens!

I've been saying the same thing for a while now. I've said for past few years that poor recruitment and lack of recruitment will come back to haunt us and IMO it has.

The retention of certain players has also been very very poor and we've gone stale.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:47 pm  

St pete wrote:

I've been saying the same thing for a while now. I've said for past few years that poor recruitment and lack of recruitment will come back to haunt us and IMO it has.

The retention of certain players has also been very very poor and we've gone stale.

I think that is a different issue from the article. Are wilkin and hohaia too old to make an impact on SL? Steve Menzies might say otherwise. And Perry and laffranchi? Both are younger than peacock and Morley. So I would say age isn't an issue. Whether they are too soft, or just not good enough is a different thing, and it does appear that we cNt match tougher packs.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:12 pm  

I don't think age is an issue in the pack, though big name players are not standing up at the minute. I think age may be an issue in the backs with a lot of inexperience there.

We are stale though and changes need to be made, but IMO it's tweaking rather than wholesale change. An experienced half back and a new full back and I think we'd be a different proposition.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:21 pm  

SomersetSaint wrote:

I think that is a different issue from the article. Are wilkin and hohaia too old to make an impact on SL? Steve Menzies might say otherwise. And Perry and laffranchi? Both are younger than peacock and Morley. So I would say age isn't an issue. Whether they are too soft, or just not good enough is a different thing, and it does appear that we cNt match tougher packs.

For every Steve Menzies there are 20, 30 , 40 or even more players who can't hack it past the age of 34 - 35.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:55 pm  

SomersetSaint wrote:

I think that is a different issue from the article. Are wilkin and hohaia too old to make an impact on SL? Steve Menzies might say otherwise. And Perry and laffranchi? Both are younger than peacock and Morley. So I would say age isn't an issue. Whether they are too soft, or just not good enough is a different thing, and it does appear that we cNt match tougher packs.

IMO we are to old and to soft in the pack. The team hasn't had enough new blood in it since 2006. We hit our Peak and never built on it.

The lack of recruitment in the halves has crucified us and will do until we do something about it.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:01 pm  

St pete wrote:

IMO we are to old and to soft in the pack. The team hasn't had enough new blood in it since 2006. We hit our Peak and never built on it.

The lack of recruitment in the halves has crucified us and will do until we do something about it.

Who to sign though? The quality of available half backs is not good, Wigan had a lot of cap space available and ended up with Smith and Green, neither are top quality.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:24 pm  

Billinge_Lump wrote:

Who to sign though? The quality of available half backs is not good, Wigan had a lot of cap space available and ended up with Smith and Green, neither are top quality.

We should have been looking to replace longy in his last year. How long ago was that?

We brought lance in when we should have brought a proper halve in.

The likes of Gardner and Meli should never have been kept on this long. They are old, finished and eating our cap up.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 7:37 pm  

St pete wrote:

We should have been looking to replace longy in his last year. How long ago was that?

Had there not been issues with Eastmond I don't think we'd be having this discussion. At that time we had Pryce as the experienced partner with Eastmond as the youngster coming in, had he still been here he'd be in his 3rd or 4th year as first choice half back (injuries permitting of course)

We brought lance in when we should have brought a proper halve in.

Again, the question is of availability. Seeing as Lance was signed as a half back, I presume we were looking for one at the time. No half back of any real quality has been signed by a SL club in the last 2 years. The club obviously thought that Lance was the best available.

The likes of Gardner and Meli should never have been kept on this long. They are old, finished and eating our cap up.

Gardner I'll agree with, I think Meli has given us enough to be resigned until now, this should probably be his last year though.

Re: Too old and too soft? : Sun Feb 10, 2013 8:03 pm  

I agree with the Wingers, the half back situation is a mixed bag of blame. Eastmond was a problem, but we did not help ourselves by telling Longy and Smith to take a hike, before negotiating with him.

Signing Lance as a half when we already had Gaskell, Wheeler, Lomax and Pryce was a bit of an error, had we not signed Lance, could we have kept Pryce???

The centre situation well Pete has said it longer than I've been on this site, it goes back to Talau.

However the pack should hold it's own and I'm not going to call time on our season when it only comes down to 4 games at the other end.

Some Leeds fans wanted McDermott sacked midway through both of the last 2 seasons and look how silly that looks now. I was expecting a highly defensive game today and from the score and what little I heard of it defenses were on top. I was looking at 20 - 12 to saints so 16 - 4 is a better than expected result. No need to be killing teams this early on. Build slowly, Leeds lost today, but they are not going to hit the panic button.