personally i don't think simmons has improved us in anyway, with arguably a stronger squad this year. fwiw I don't think we'd have finished 2nd with potter, because simply put wire and wigan are better than us. saying that i would suggest that under potter we wouldn't have lost to wigan twice (hammered in one) and warrington twice (hammered in one).. defense is the biggest concern, I honestly feel when we're on our line, especially against wigan and warrington, we're going to concede a try, i have NO confidence in our line defence..
to say we just got second is ridiculous, we got 2nd by right, nothing else
our attack is no better, we're all to content on the 'barge over' tries, for example this year LMS and Graham have scored 6 tries each, other than LMS against huddersfield, I'd suggest they were all from under 2 yards. compare that to Coley and Lima at wigan, 1 each, morley and carvell have 2 each at wire.. we obviously still focus on barge over tries this year.. in the top 25 try scorers, wigan have 4 of their 5 backs in the there, warrington have all seven of their first choice backs (hodgson, king, atkins, bridge, monaghan, briers, myler) in there too, saints have foster.. done mean to dwell on the stats, but a third of our tries are scored in the forwards (50/107)
what i think it is important is that on balance, potter and simmons have had similar problems.. if you want to talk about injuries, then potter had an equally bad run.. we went 16 SL games on the trot with a minimum of 6 players out, the worst being at wakefield were we had 9 missing (soliola, eastmond, cunningham, flannery, dean, wheeler, dixon, faasavalu, lomax), we also won at wigan without gardner, soliola, eastmond, wilkin, wheeler, faasavalu and lomax.. potter brought through (albeit enforced) foster, lomax, dixon, ashurst, emmitt and dean, who although been on the fringes for a year or two, all played a third of the season last year.. simmons has only really had to use gaskell, magennis and makinson this year who have very little experience..
again, i'm sick of going on about it, but the subs policy is a joke, simple as.. i've not got the stats, but it'd be interesting to see how many minutes that 4th sub has played, i'd suggest it averages about ten minutes. what bothers me is the three games when we've been desperate in the forwards (bradford away, hull kr away and wigan CC) we've persisted with a back on the bench, when we're crying out for a forward.. i wouldn't be bothered but with wilkin and moore who can cover the halves, flannery and soliola who can cover the centres, which in turn frees up meli and shenny to cover wing and full back, plus lomax who can cover anywhere.. in all honestly, the back on the bench is the one thing that REALLY winds me up over simmons.. people say "well roby can play all the match, so we don't need a spare hooker, we're the same as everyone else" well instead of us turning that into an advantage by having an extra forward, we just bring ourselves down..
anyway the original point, simmons has done no more than potter for me, the only thing he has is that he has far more personality than potter ever did.. but then again, it's not who i'd like a pint with on a friday night
