I know Furner will get more stick, and I understand that, particularly in terms of poor effort, but I think Marty summed it up - we're soft and dumb as a team. Softness I do hold the coach accountable for - there's no excuse for lack of effort/poor technique in defence. But dumbness can't be solved by shuffling dumb players around or going through drills in training.
If you compare our squad to Sts and Wire, ignoring younger players its hard to make a case that anyone other than Hurrell and Merrin would get into their 17. What's really worrying is how few you could argue would be certs in any of the mid table teams when everyone is fit. Dwyer would get a game because he at least has a dig, but who else, hand on heart would walk into any other SL 17 bar London based on current form? Maybe Peteru?
Hopefully Ava and Crosby come into contention soon and we can at least stabilise the pack, but as Gotcha alluded, we have poor players across the park. Fixing this is going to take at least another two years, as even if we make the right recruitment decisions moving forward as we are going to be stuck with a bunch of duffers for some time.
Whilst I think our recruitment is probably done for his year and has focused on the pack, the absolute number 1 priority for me has to be a halfback who can lead the team around. Without that we'll continue to lose games we should win far too often regardless of who else is in the side.