Utter nonsense that our defence was OK most of the year. Of the first 20 games I'd say Widnes (A), Cats (A), KR (H), Sts (A), Hudds x 2 (A), Cas (H) Wigan (MM), and Wire (A) were awful. That's almost half of our first 20 games. On top of that any viewing of tries against us across most of the season shows amateurish attempts. The problems with the defence were nothing to do with fatigue or personnel - it was jagged defensive lines, zero line speed and pathetic individual efforts including shirt grabbing right on our own line.

I think defence was the biggest issue. Our defence was all over the place. The players looked knackered after about 15 mins and we were barely hanging on in defence in some games.

There was little line speed and little bite in the tackle. There was also little to no control of the tackle with not enough players getting involved in the tackle to slow it down. Combine all that along with no hooker, no mobile backrower and some very big forwards then it's obvious as to how we were getting killed at the play the ball regularly.

Agree, there were definitely a couple of games early in the year where I thought we scored enough to win, but soft defense let us down. The Catalan game comes to mind.

I agree with everything Him has posted about the defence above, especially our inability to control the ruck. Which imo stemmed from having too many big immobile forwards in the middle of the park trying to make up for the lack of a Hooker.

We conceded only 99 points more than we did last season, we scored about 350 points fewer.

We conceded only 50 points more than St helens, we scored 170 fewer

we conceded 60 points LESS than Cas we scored 210 fewer

Smokey you can fire stats at us all day long but people know what they see, and what was on offer for a fair chunk of this season regards defence was drivel. I saw that with my own two eyes. I don't fancy getting into a 4 page debate with you that has no ending so will just leave it as my opinion. If you feel differently, then fair enough.

They can be wrong,

the facts speak for themselves, we defended well enough to put ourselves in a position to win. We didnt attack well enough to do so.

He can dress it up how he likes, but most on here know the real reasons.

The only fact that is clear is the the whole of the competition is scoring less points this year. Last year all of the top 7 in super league had scored more than 700 points. This year and it will finish that way, only four of them have scored that.

That is why across the board defences are conceeding less, although Smokey seems to think it is something good that we have conceeded 99 points more. Actually we average 3.5 ponits a game more, which in percentage terms is 16% which is a very noticable value.

I am sure tvoc could produce stats with history on the defence which would have far more meaning.

total number of points scored in 23rounds 2015 = 6493

total number of points scored in 23rounds in 2016 = 6463

difference in total number of points scored last year to this = 39 a 0.5% change 'across the board'

Percentage increase in number of points conceded = +16%

percentage decrease in number of points scored = -46%

av difference in points conceded = +3.5

av difference in points scored = -15.4

That might be what the stats line said but going purely on what I saw with my own eyes our defence was a complete shambles. As already mentioned the ruck, and some soft missed tackles especially in the middle. I think that if we did indeed only conceded a few more points per game is credit to our scrambling defence which was still pretty good.

We knew we were likely to struggle offensively this year, having lost two pivots and not really replaced them. However there was no reason for our defence to become the disorganised shambles it did, especially at times when it looked like an attitude/effort/fitness thing.

seems a little circular doesn't it?

Also, you have to remember, we were much poorer attacking, our kicking game was poor, we dropped a LOT of ball, all of these add up to defending more sets and defending them in worse positions.

The fact is, the defence is irrelevant to our major issues. Even if I ignore all the evidence and accept our defence was terrible, had we scored as many points as we did last year, that terrible defence would have given us the best points difference in the entire competition.

Our offence was bad, and as you say, that probably put a lot of stress on our defence.

I've never been a big fan of the 'we'll just score more than you mentality. And imo the fact that the defensive issues lasted all year (to an extent, certainly got better with Segeyaro and others back). Is worrying because defence should be a lit easier to fix than attacking issues.

At the end of the day we'll need a massive improvement on both sides of the ball to contend next year, and imo, defence must always come first.

Saints, Wigan, Hudds, and Warrington conceded fewer points than us last year. Nobody scored more.