AdmiralHanson wrote:
Spot on.
That goes with the same massive weight of possession that we gave Hull KR (especially in the 1st half) and they have nothing to show for it either.
If we were playing the like the way we came out of the blocks last season, we'd have blown some of the opposition away. Clearly the club has got a different peak / focus for this season and I expect us to lose at points along the way, but as you say and many of us agree with, the team hasn't even hit any sort of reasonable form yet.
As for Wire ... I haven't seen them in any Grand Finals recently. Maybe they can remind us as to which ones they've appeared in, despite spending shed-loads of cash (including one player who is on a lot more than anyone in the Championship winning Leeds side) ?
That goes with the same massive weight of possession that we gave Hull KR (especially in the 1st half) and they have nothing to show for it either.
If we were playing the like the way we came out of the blocks last season, we'd have blown some of the opposition away. Clearly the club has got a different peak / focus for this season and I expect us to lose at points along the way, but as you say and many of us agree with, the team hasn't even hit any sort of reasonable form yet.
As for Wire ... I haven't seen them in any Grand Finals recently. Maybe they can remind us as to which ones they've appeared in, despite spending shed-loads of cash (including one player who is on a lot more than anyone in the Championship winning Leeds side) ?
Actually this is not unlike the way we played at the start of last season. If you remember the Bulls game in particular we scrambled well and held them up over the line several times. Our attack did the job that day, but the Bulls got more posession than they deserved and on another day could have easily had half a dozen tries, as did many teams last year against us. Bad discipline (which came back to haunt us in the middle of the season and in the CC against Stains) and ordinary ball control cost us the last half of the season (true we had a huge number of injuries but the pattern was set when we had a full squad). I think we rely too much on scrambling and a huge defensive effort when we could do it easier with better discipline and better ball control. Our 5th tackle plays near the opposition line are also not good enough and far too many times we fail to maintain pressure with repeat sets.
Ironicaly we have got all that right in the last two GF's and shown that with good ball control, discipline and patience we are easily the best team in the competition.
It would be interesting to see what possesion stats looked like last season for games we lost and won. It appeared last year that we played mostly without the ball. I don't think we can do it this year and we have started this way already.
