Bulldozer wrote:...but ultimately not getting the right result (week in week out!) has to have consequences
Ultimately, yes. Other than the Wigan debacle, we seem to be losing (or even winning...) by tiny margins. A slight shift one way on those margins and we'd be celebrating sitting near the top of the table now. But we are not, and obviously if things do not improve someone will ultimately have to be held accountable.
Someone said a while back that we seemed to have a competition with two "good" teams, ten "mediocre" teams and two "bad" teams (or similar).
That's the usual negativity talking, of course. But the underlying point he made needs further examination cos he's only a bit wrong.
IMO we
currently have:
1. Two very good teams, who its hard to see past for honours.
2. Ten, probably eleven good teams, all of whom now - with the increased standards overall, salary cap and general levelling out of standards, can beat each other on the day and where its hard to rank.
3. One seemingly poor team.
We could have been near the top of group 2 not near the bottom with relatively modest performance improvements, so there must remain hope for the rest of the season.
The competition has become much more like the NRL now in terms of difference between top and bottom. Remember back to 1997, when we got beat by Auckland and the press had a field day as they were the bottom club in the NRL and we were top in SL? What the press was missing was that the gap in ability and performance between top and bottom in the NRL was far far narrower than in SL at the time.
I suggest many people are now making the same mistake looking within the SL competition?