jonh wrote:
I’m quite pragmatic about the lethargy in our performances.
Given how many games we have played over the last 2 seasons it’s impossible not to have peaks and troughs. In performance.
These will often be due to pre planned peaks and troughs within the training program.
I’m guessing we will have planned to drop off the intensity at this point of the season with a view to peaking again ahead of the play offs.
If you look at the current period we are in, it’s one of the only times where we can pull back in training and prepare to peak again for the playoffs.
I’d love to see us play 100% all year but it’s just not realistic.
You can plan to peak twice maybe 3 times a year successfully, and it requires a lot of skill planning and management from the coaches and particularly the performance/conditioning team.
I could obviously be wrong, I just think this lull will precede a strong build up towards the post offs which we will start to see signs of in a few weeks time.
Not a personal jab Jon but the peaks and troughs in your post did resonate with me.
I’m in the first past the post are the champions guy. The playoff system more or less makes certain that some games/results aren’t important. I didn’t turn up today because watching effectively a poor championship team versus a team playing for “troughs” just didn’t appeal to me. I started watching on tv but after 5 minutes switched over to the athletics where for some unknown reason a guy decided to peak after the olympics to break the 3000 metre world record that had stood for over 20 years.
I don’t buy a ST for peaks and troughs. I will accept losses and loss of form but for the life of me I can’t accept “planned” troughs.
This season and particularly the last month have on the whole been pretty forgetful from a league perspective. Obviously injuries have played a part but the more I think about it the more I feel that I’ve got to accept peaks and troughs. I can on the whole, predict the troughs so this season I didn’t attend the following home games Castleford, Hull, Huddersfield and Leyth part 2. That’s over 25% of home games where I wasn’t remotely interested in the game either because the result was a forgone conclusion or I’d understood that those games were the “trough” games.
I want us to win and I’m more than happy sometimes just to get the win because it’s unrealistic to assume that we can peak every single game. What I can’t accept is that we “plan” for troughs.
For what it’s worth I think our current lethargy isn’t down to peaks or troughs I just think that our strength in depth, particularly in the front row, is due to lack of quality versus quantity available.
I still think that we are more than capable of winning the GF but that’s probably more due to a very low quality competition rather than we can just flick a switch to turn the magic on.
For me the reason why we are struggling to click at the moment is due to the loss of Cooper, Isa and O’Neil plus the interim losses of French and Field ie lack of experience rather than tiredness. If you tell people that they should be tired then the natural reaction is to feel tired. Peet and his staff hopefully can get us on the front foot starting from Saturday at Catalan. To do that he can start by letting Farrimond play his natural game rather than be a supporting role particularly from a kicking point of view. Take the shackles of Matty or at some point(s) we will lose the arm struggle over the next 6 weeks or so.