Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:00 pm  

Fantastic Mr Catpiss wrote:

i've said it before, it all goes back to the saints game, we hit a brick wall, then struggled to recover afterwards.

Yes but why go away from what was working? We won games the first way, lost to Saints. Change of tactic after one loss, drastic but fair enough... lost 6 on the bounce playing a certain way, no change. Why?!?

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:01 pm  

Lord Tony Smith wrote:

The club invited journos to their marketing meeting last week. Looks like we are concentrating on Wolfie's next stunt over signing a couple of props.

It was funny once, now it’s boring.

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:08 pm  

karetaker wrote:

It was funny once, now it’s boring.

I've only said it once.

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:46 pm  

http://youtu.be/9gbJTtxhy5w

http://youtu.be/9gbJTtxhy5w

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:49 pm  

It's OK LTS, I was listening very carefully. Agree with the sentiment regarding our style of play, and woefully boring tactics. SP has to change things, otherwise we should be looking to replace him should there be no improvement by Easter 2020.

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 5:19 pm  

Lord Tony Smith wrote:

I've only said it once.

Didn’t mean you I’m just bored with the marketing funnies I’d rather have fun watching us win a Grand Final.

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:00 pm  

Well i'd say BMM will definately here next year as his manager has just been suspended by the NRL. All 16 clubs have been told not to deal with him, good result for us

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:57 pm  

Or thane wrote:

Well i'd say BMM will definately here next year as his manager has just been suspended by the NRL. All 16 clubs have been told not to deal with him, good result for us

...and Waterfields

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:23 pm  

Fantastic Mr Catpiss wrote:

i've said it before, it all goes back to the saints game, we hit a brick wall, then struggled to recover afterwards.

This was one of our characteristics in the Cullen years, which has reemerged. We had a talented squad back then, but we had poor resilience when it came to a bad result or being in a bad run of form, it tended to perpetuate. Cullen used to talk about it in press conferences too, saying that some result from a few weeks ago 'knocked the stuffing out of us'. On the other hand if Bradford or Saints had a bad loss, the team facing them next would end up facing the backlash! That was a big difference between us and the top sides back then.

Once the rot set in this year it seemed like we didn't do anything to change it. It wasn't even like we were blowing hot and cold, we just became the same side that meekly accepted second best to teams.

BUT we also have to acknowledge that there were two anomaly results that did not fit this trend - the CC semi final and final, when we beat good sides and played very well despite our form leading up to them. Given that we won a major trophy off the back of that, it was pretty significant!

Re: Rumours 2 : Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:57 pm  

Barbed Wire wrote:

If we miss out on a top line prop, after going to press weeks ago about our intentions to bring at least one in, someone needs to be held accountable. It was clear last season, and had been for years, that the front row needs some investment.

Recruitment for a number of years has been poor, often pinning our hopes on one big name halfback and ignoring the fact that we have a deficiency in the middle (Sandow, Roberts, Austin),

I just hope this isn’t history repeating itself and people are hiding behind Widdop and calling the recruitment campaign a success. It’s not, and a halfback won’t cure our problem

The club's PR machine will make sure most of our fans accept the recruitment campaign as a success. They will make a big fuss of Widdop, there will be the right sort of interviews with the Warrington Guardian where the players talk about how well training is going, some of the longer serving players will be brought out to give the line "this is the strongest squad we've had in my time here". Either Karl Fitzpatrick or one of the coaches will say something like "there are no excuses now, it's time to win the Grand Final".

The mood on here will be a lot more positive after these feel good stories over the Christmas period. Wait till people start posting threads of predictions for SL 2020, at least half of the posts will have us finishing top, others who don't have us finishing top will say we're going to win the GF. Even rubber duckie who seems to be in critical mode right now, will be telling everyone that we will win the double.

There will be some thread about the Academy that concludes we have a set of young guns ready to take the league by storm. Then there will be one about what's your strongest starting 17 which will conclude that the big difference between this year and the years before is the 'strength in depth' - in 2020 we'll almost be able to field 2 squads equally strong!

Then wait till we have the pre-season army camp, we'll have stories in the Warrington Guardian about how they spent a week on Brecon Beacons training with the paras and it will be red meat to the masses on here, there will be posts saying how great the current regime is, how in the old days they used to go for holiday camp in Lanzarote but that wouldn't be tolerated in the elite set up we have today.

Meanwhile a few of the old timers on here won't have drunk the 'Kool Aid' (Wires71, lefty, me) and will start asking pointed questions, we will get told we are free to go and support Wigan, if we can't get behind the team.

Then the first two weeks of the season are going to be against Wigan and Saints and it will be a cold shower of reality.