They had a lot of injuries that disrupted their play - a really good attack is very difficult to defend against - as Gotcha mentioned Leeds in 2005 and the first year under McClennan played some stunning attacking rugby and without a great defence won the majority of their games.

If you have a good attack you will have a good proportion of the ball that makes life much easier.

As I said in the Burrow thread, Last year our defence regressed a bit, our attack regressed massively. We conceded 99 points more than 2015 but scored 354 fewer and that includes a terrible 5 game spell where we conceded 38, 28, 52, 40, 52.

A good defence keeps you in games, your attack can be appalling for 70mins but if your defence has kept you in it, you attack can fire for 10 minutes and win you a game. A good attack makes a good defence much easier.

Our big problem last year was that we didnt really have the game management to help our defence (good long kicking, repeat sets) or the knowledge to build attacks (our last tackle options were terrible) which often left us chasing games and having to try the long range or spectacular which increase the chance of dropped ball, which gave us poorer field position and made defending harder. Whatever his physical issues about his speed and size, i liked the way Lilley learned adapted to this as the season went on.

No worries.

Wigan had a solid game to fall back on, much like us in years past when we had injuries. We lost too many leaders on and off the pitch to keep us ticking over. The team effectively fell apart as a unit.
Tough times, more to come.

The more structured your style the more you can adapt to injuries. Whenever you lose key players performance will drop, but less so if everyone at least tries to play the same way when in the same position.

Last season it really felt at times as though BM and whatever senior players had no idea what was going wrong or how to fix it. Like it or not, that sort of team implosion is the responsibility of the coach first and foremost.

You can say that again..Do us a favour and stick your marketing manager on hold.He's taking all the feeds up with what the Rhinos are going to do in 2017.Cant get a word in edge ways..

Cheers..

spot on. it lumbered from one week to the next with no improvement and no lessons learnt

That's the worry for me too & McD's comments do not make me think this year will be any better.

Not 100% accurate. One lesson that McDermott & GH did learn was that the club had been sold a pup in the form of Beau Falloon and there was a small improvement once they'd addressed that. But beyond that, I'd agree.

Not impossible that further lessons have been taken on board since then but so much this year is going to depend upon Parcell imo.

They made improvements towards the end of the regular season, it just came too late to avoid the Middle 8's.