Erik the not red wrote:Of course Hull played down the middle a lot. It wasn't too far off of the first choice pack and they were up against the weakest one in SL. At the same time a 2 -7 composed of debutants, a retiree and players out of position was unlikely to gel together well and not surprisingly it didn't.
Spot on tactics from Radford to get the win - how anyone can criticise him on that is insane.
Then again if you coached them with your sports psychologist in tow then no doubt Hull would have won by 50.
If we had a sports psychologist we wouldn't be making as many dumb plays/fighting/giving away needless penalties/switching off as often as we do, clearly you don't get human beings.
We'd have won by more if we'd not done the same old dumb stuff, if we'd passed the ball more, instead we kept clanging it down the middle which was at times was a wasted tackle or two in almost every set.
Tactics to beat a pub team, just lol, it was purely through having a better team out, that pack was a match for any in SL but wasn't used effectively for the most part. We drew them in but then failed to get it out wide often enough.
So if you are on debut you don't trust to them and don't pass it out for them to make a play in case they fail, what utter crud, that's part and parcel of how you stunt development. It's a bit like bringing on a youngster with 5-10 minutes to go in a game you've already won (something Radford has done numerous times in his tenure), other teams/coaches put their kids in and let them play, if they make mistakes so be it but it's how we as humans develop not just in sport but in life. And if he didn't trust to get the ball out to his retiree (who was a passenger all game) why did he bother to include him at all, particularly at the expense/exclusion of someone who'd been playing regularly? The debutant was not out of place at all and would have been just fine, it's not like he isn't used to actually playing rugby, it's not like he's the first debutant in sport, there's simply no trust in the capabilities and thus as I've said all along he stunts the growth of players at the club.We simply did not use the backs effectively which is our style in a nutshell and highlights Radford's failure's,
He is so concerned with being ultra conservative that it's actually detrimental to our performance. He can't see past banging it down the middle and using brute force (hence the team he's built) too often instead of utilising the backs when we have the opportunity to do so, yesterday we could have ripped them a new one, pound them down the middle and then get it out wide, nope we went for the stale/same old and managed to scrape past including all the usual BS with regards to discipline/dumb plays which rears its head every weekend and Radford cannot/will not address but come up with some rubbish for the media.
As I said, I simply do not think he will take the club any further, I really thought at the start of the season he had turned a corner and was learning to recognise what he needs to do to improve things this and yet the Fev game (where we were opened up at the edges too easily just like yesterday) and indeed other games this season has for me nailed it that he's simply not capable of delivering us a GF winning team.
Too many on here seem to be satisfied with a back to back CC win, yes that's nice but with the squads we've had and particularly a season were we had barely any injuries and blew the potential of the treble, meh, Wigan and Leeds would say that was not good enough in 4 years.
Get an attack coach AND someone to advise him how to get the players to not just listen to what he's telling them but to strengthen them mentally to carry that out particularly in concentration through games when fatigued and the errors/penalties/discipline area which would improve us, but he won't because he won't accept his limitations. He keeps saying the same things to the media but the reality is he does not have the skillset to be able to get the players to change.
