Chris71 wrote:Don't agree, yes we lost Carvell but his departure is not the main reason we are a poor side, as for Crocker you don't miss what you never had, Thorman is crap admittedly but then we never saw much of Dykes.
For me there is still enough in the players we have to be doing a hell of let better that we are and from time to time this season they have shown they can do it when they can be arsed but sadly that is only in glimpses.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying we would be world beaters but we should be at least competing with the teams in 3rd to 8th, Agar should certainly be getting more out of the players he has at his disposal. An example is Wakefield under Kear not a great talented bunch of players but he gets the best out of them and has moulded them into a team and plays to its strengths, plus he hasn't taken any messing and shipped out if needed and they too have had injury problems, were as our coach is totally clueless or has just written this and last season off as its not his team.
I had us pegged as finishing 7-9 before the season even started. That assumed Crocker would arrive and we wouldn't get an injury crisis. I haven't seen anything to convince me that we would do any better than that even with a moderately gifted coach.
Without Carvell our pack has no go-forward, so we're always playing on the back foot. He was an absolutely crucial member of the squad, reflected in the efforts we went to to keep him. His absence was always going to be massive. On top of that we have no halfbacks to speak of. You say we hardly saw Dykes, and that's correct. No coincidence then that we only ever performed when we
did see him. Thorman is worse than Dykes playing the odd game, as he's crap all the time. And Horne might as well be injured again for all the impact he's having.
There is absolutely no way that this squad is anywhere near competing with 3rd place.
Wakey have had some disasters this season, but have a pack with more go-forward and more creativity in the halves. This, coupled with an excellent team spirit and Kear's knack of getting teams to play better than the sum of their parts, is what's got them where they are.
I'm not suggesting that Agar shouldn't have done better. In fact I've specifically stated that he should. But some people are massively overestimating the potential of our current squad IMO.