Quality of squad wise and Wakefield aside most SL teams are there or there about equal with one another now.
This is what makes quality coaching and youth development all the more important.
Sadly we are lacking in both departments compared to Leeds saints Warrington and Wigan and breeding that winning culture amongst those sides makes them a more attractive proposition for the better homegrown players to join rather than sign or stay with for example with the likes of us.
I personally think Radford has currently reached his coaching ceiling and I am still far from convinced he is the right man to take us forward any further.
Pearson though has decided he is and that our academy should merge which to me really lacks ambition.
It's ok spending on basic infrastructure but to become successful we really need that bit more investment to take that next successful step to make us a more attractive proposition for players and fans.

Warringtons youth are no better then ours, if out is say it's worse.

We are going to finish higher than last year in a more competitive league and we have made the Super 8's so its undeniable that we have made progress compared to last year, even if some of the old failings are still present.

I think Radford has done enough to see out the third and final year of his contract but I would be unhappy if he was to be offered an extension before this time next year.

What we think is irrelevant anyway as Pearson has clearly decided Radford is the coach for the foreseeable future.

Good post, although we have to perform to the end in the top 8 and try and finish at least 6th IMO, once(if) we can't finish in the top 4, give some more gametime to the likes of Fash, HWT, Lancaster and Naughton.

However, we have still to hit the levels of achievement seen under the last coach. Not to mention that our owner clearly stated that just achieving the top 8 would NOT be seen as a success under his regime.

True but our owner seems to have a habit of changing his mind about lots of things.

I guess it is a bit sad that scraping into the top 8 is seen as an achievement.

We are about on par with when Gentle was in charge, it's now up to the players and Radford to make sure we kick on and improve on that and challenge for the top 4, with our current squad and signings we have real potential, but I've said and thought this many other times.

Well I hope the players are professional enough to realise that the season is not over until the end of the super eights. That being the case they should be going out to try and win every match and LR should be drilling this into them. I didn't buy a season pass just to watch an end of season party lasting 7 games.

Making the top 8 is an achievement. Just not the season defining one we should be aiming for.

We still have 7 games to kick on and while I'd argue that we haven't got back to the level we were at under Gentle we have the potential to exceed it this season.

Let's face it - we are in a far better position now than I and many other fans were predicting for most of the season and even as recently as the last couple of weeks. No reason why we can't continue to exceed expectations even given our injury situation.

Are we? 6th in a 14 team league +cc final in 2013.
With a fading patched up Horne and our no.7 out for 1/3 of 2013 and was never really the same after his head injury, starting the season with a rookie winger & centre on the same side, rookie FB & SH for the last 8 games with zero SL exp. Ellis missed 16 SL games out of 29 (incl Playoffs) so to finish where we did AND reach the CC final was nothing short of a miracle. We then had the players giving up in the final game which took the edge off a progressive 2nd season under PG.

Radford has benefited from a set of established halves that have being fit pretty much all season, Ellis has missed a few games for sure but Watts, Paea and Mini have bolstered the fowards no end this season.
Given the squad we have I'm really dissapointed where we are, we've scored less points than all but one team in SL (the shower that is Wakey) so there's a relatively big difference from our performance/level in 2013 to this season despite only a potential one place differential in league position, we've hugely underperformed IMO.