Re: Wire game stats : Fri Sep 05, 2014 8:13 pm  

Although Wellens was one of the worse players, for what its worth Wellens created our 2 trys otherwise it could have been 39-0 close to the Catalan standard.

Re: Wire game stats : Tue Sep 09, 2014 1:52 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

Wires plan was simple.

Exploit Saints lack of mobility amongst our big forwards.

Time after time Russell jumped in at dummy half and scooted. He beat the first marker nearly every time.
This meant Saints defence was on the back foot for most of the game. With Warrington on the front foot this allowed Monaghan to orchestrate his forwards into running through holes. Further stretching Saints defence and keeping us on the back foot.

On the 6th tackle with good field position wires view was to starve Saints of possession by forcing dropouts. This then denied us the opportunity to attack and forced us to expend yet more energy defending.

When we did get field position we were capable of exposing Warrington. However Wires tactics and orchestration of them was so good that we rarely got a sniff.

As has happened at other times this season, once a side got two scores up against Saints. The Saints players heads went down and we folded.

I put some of the errors down to the pressure we felt in the game.
Very few of this side have any big game experience. I think only Wello and Roby have picked up any gongs. The rest don't know what its like to win something, or even win big matches with something at stake.
That's one of the reasons why I think that it was essential to win the league leaders this year. Its not much of a trophy but it can and should be used as a springboard to bigger and better things.
As things stand I think Castleford will win it this year. We will fail miserably in the playoffs.

Next season without any half backs at the start of the year we will struggle. The new format will mean all sides will come out flying. This will be especially true of the likes of Wigan, Leeds and Warrington, who will show how much better than us they really are.

To be fair, either Carney or Wells pointed out Wires tactic of bringing the quick backs into play around the ruck to run at forwards. Given the way we "went big" against leeds the week before, it was a good tactic to use.

That just happened to be the way they did it though, most tactics would have worked, given the way we coughed up possession and, as you say, completely folded (embarrassingly) when we should have been trying to make a come back.

Dux and I were texting during the game and he pointed out our complete lack of organisation at the ptb when defending. At one point, under our stick, Jones creamed the wire player (Hill, I think) and dumped them on his back. Should have been a dominant tackle, but second later, Soliola's rolling round on the floor while Hill's up on his feet and playing the ball. Next thing is they're running against an unorganised defence and they're over. When Brown was at Huddersfield, wrestling and getting an upper hand at the ruck was something he was known well, and the likes of him and McGuire were being criticised for their negative, yet effective tactics. Where's that now? We never seem to have control of the ruck?

Re: Wire game stats : Tue Sep 09, 2014 2:17 pm  

Offside Monkey wrote:

Dux and I were texting during the game and he pointed out our complete lack of organisation at the ptb when defending. At one point, under our stick, Jones creamed the wire player (Hill, I think) and dumped them on his back. Should have been a dominant tackle, but second later, Soliola's rolling round on the floor while Hill's up on his feet and playing the ball. Next thing is they're running against an unorganised defence and they're over. When Brown was at Huddersfield, wrestling and getting an upper hand at the ruck was something he was known well, and the likes of him and McGuire were being criticised for their negative, yet effective tactics. Where's that now? We never seem to have control of the ruck?

If you watch Wigan, they tend to get up from the grounded player one defender at a time. That way there is always a marker already pretty much set before the attacker can even attempt to get onto his feet. When we complete a tackle, everyone gets up at once, so that you've effectively got an even race to see who can stand up the quickest. We need to be more co-ordinated at the ruck in order to stack the odds in our favour and stop our opponents playing at whatever speed they like.

Re: Wire game stats : Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:16 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

I put some of the errors down to the pressure we felt in the game.
Very few of this side have any big game experience. I think only Wello and Roby have picked up any gongs. The rest don't know what its like to win something, or even win big matches with something at stake.
.

Let's not forget that LH is a world cup winner.

Re: Wire game stats : Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:23 pm  

Dux wrote:

If you watch Wigan, they tend to get up from the grounded player one defender at a time. That way there is always a marker already pretty much set before the attacker can even attempt to get onto his feet. When we complete a tackle, everyone gets up at once, so that you've effectively got an even race to see who can stand up the quickest. We need to be more co-ordinated at the ruck in order to stack the odds in our favour and stop our opponents playing at whatever speed they like.

Have spotted that too, we really do strugglewith basics in defence sometimes.

The annoying thing is we clearly know what the right things to do are, as we've done them on a number of occasions this year. Hair pullingly inconsistent.

Re: Wire game stats : Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:21 pm  

The Chair Maker wrote:

Wires plan was simple.

......turn up at LP on time on the right day and errrr; that's it

Re: Wire game stats : Wed Sep 10, 2014 2:51 pm  

Wellens and Lance had a bad game. However, if you take them out the team you're left with no leadership, no creativity or spark for the playoffs.

Re: Wire game stats : Wed Sep 10, 2014 3:07 pm  

Twentyman wrote:

Wellens and Lance had a bad game. However, if you take them out the team you're left with no leadership, no creativity or spark for the playoffs.

Compared to what?

From what I have seen in the past few weeks, we have no leadership, no creativity and no spark.

This team is spineless, it lacks courage, ambition, desire, heart and brains.

Re: Wire game stats : Wed Sep 10, 2014 3:54 pm  

If you look at the stats the players we complain about in Wellens, Wilkin and Hohaia have the highest try assists in the team with the exception of Roby, you might might be able to drop one of them but not all of them. As it is you have got to pick Wellens every time with Hohaia, Wilkin and Walsh being out long term or end of season. Its also worth noting that these same players have some of the highest tackle counts, for me the pack are not doing a fair share of the work to give our temporary halves some energy, space and time.
Its the usual observation we look good in theory but in practice we have no work ethic and team work, leadership is Walsh nobody else has that quality.

Re: Wire game stats : Wed Sep 10, 2014 4:06 pm  

EHW wrote:

... we have no leadership, no creativity and no spark.

This team is spineless, it lacks courage, ambition, desire, heart and brains.

Just checking, is this the team that has won 19/26 and that sits at the top of SL with a game to go, or some other team?

Shiit the bed, Bradford must be worse than I thought then