Don't know if someone's done this previously and I've missed it so apologies if they have....

There's been a lot of talk about how Cas did last year so I thought I'd compare their performance after 7 games with ours.

Salford - 2 points, scored 108, conceded 269, difference -161
Castleford - 2 points, scored 116, conceded 203, difference -87

(stats from super league website)

So they were clearly struggling massively too at this time last year. However their one win had come against Leeds and they had pushed Catalans and That London fairly close. They had also had a 64 point pasting by Huddersfield. They only scored more than 20 in the Leeds game

Just as a clue as to what we can expect in the weeks to come they only won one of their next 7 games (against Saints!) and had some real hammerings off Bradford and Wakefield so half way through the season their stats read:

4 points, scored 263, conceded 481 difference -218

They then won 5 and drew 1 of their last 13

If you can read anything into this it suggests that in terms of where we are we shouldn't panic too much. But the biggest concern for me (and everyone else looking at the posts) is the defence. Cas's experience suggests it will get worse before it gets better and we clearly can't afford for that to happen.

With regard to Mcrae and people suggesting that their mums, nans, dogs, fish, etc could have won silverware with saints, if my reading of the Saints website is correct then every coach of saints had failed to win either the championship or the challenge cup since 1995. He won both in his first season and the challenge cup again the year after. So he clearly did have something about him as a coach. My own belief is that what he did then is fairly irrelevant to the present situation but I always like to make sure the facts are known when these heated debates take place

There nmot good reading god knows what they will look like at the end of season unless they get rid of the coach

I know there is a lot of hysteria amongst the fans but are the team gradually improving by competing for longer in games?

It would seem we have progressed from a team getting blown apart in first 15 minutes to still be in the game after 30 minutes against Wigan and then being level at half time against Hull KR yesterday? Hopefully the next big steps are to still be in the game at 60 minutes and eventually the full 80!

Surely the players match fitness will improve with having to play at a higher intensity week in week out?

I am as disappointed as anybody and fully understand all the negativity but can we take any heart and optimism from this? I know our style of rugby isn't attractive to watch but surely the skill levels won't improve until we get totally up to speed with SL!

I also think another huge burden the club are suffering this season is having a number of NL1 standard players still in contract this year, just as Castleford did last year. A number of these players were signed to compete in NL1 and not SL. Had the club only offered these players one year deals they would not have signed and that could have affected our SL licence application. (Had we performed poorly in the NL1 last year)

I’m quite sure that about 10 players will be surplus to requirements at the end of the season, allowing the club to sign better quality players for 2010. (Just like Castleford have done with success this year)

I think it's too early to tell yet the redshed. I hope you're right but the defence is so poor it's a real worry. The team with the worst defence almost always finishes bottom. There has been some improvement in the last couple of games in terms of length of time we're competing.

The Warrington game could be a make or break game. On paper they should pan us but they're struggling so it's a good time to play them. If we get a good performance and (am I insane??) even a win we could really kick on from there but if we lose badly I can't see us recovering for a long time