Going back very briefly to switching off at crucial moments.

I seem to recall a Castleford game that was on SKY last year, when they were playing really well, and they had conceded a couple of soft tries, I cant remember who against, but one of the SKY team mentioned that under the posts, one of the Castleford players was laying the law down to his team mates for clocking off, despite the fact that the game was already in the bag.

Maybe this sort of mentality is what we could do to learn from

I have thought this a few times the last few seasons. First person to look at would be Kirmo but he seems quiet on the pitch, more of a leader by example. I can't remember exactly which game, possibly Saints at home but Horo has done this before.

But that's not how it works - it's not necessarily us turning off it's far more likely the opposition switching on. I ask again, who is this team that never dominates any part of a game?

Widnes have not won in 11 games but I've seen the dominate games for short periods and they are by far and away the worst.

As for Cas it clearly makes no difference who's laying the law down because as already noted there points difference is marginal which means they must by your logic be clocking off only slightly less than we are!

I understand why you think like this and it's not helped by the fact that coaches often trot it out in post match interviews but like everything else there is a bit more to it than just clocking off. I sincerely believe no player deliberately or knowingly clocks off, they may become fatigued which is different whilst statistically it's highly unlikely a whole team ever would.

I actually think that in high pressure games when we're talking about clocking off its mental fatigue. When we are talking about such detailed modern day defence structures every single player from 1 to 17 needs to be switched on for 80+ minutes.
Can yo imagine 40 odd years ago a prop foeward doing a shift down the pit, then doing a training session and then sitting through a video defence presentation zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

They're difficult to separate though - I think it's pretty well researched now that fatigue leads to reduced cognitive ability, impaired decision making and memory function; so if you're an athlete in a team game, with a particular job to do that's been drilled into you in training, the more fatigued you are, the less likely to are to perform that function to a high standard.

That said - I agree with Vastman - this myth of an entire team 'clocking off' doesn't make any sense; it's more to do with the ebb and flow of a game - one team will always have a period of 'dominance,' either of possession, penalty count, scoring, making metres, or a combination of them all; the real test is how the other team handles that, and what the outcome is - and I think in Castleford's case, particularly last season, Powell got a real insight into that and coached his team to make sure that every period of dominance resulted in points - hence the short bursts of intensity when they would score a hatful of tries and really punish the opposing team.

Yes you summed it up a lot better than I did.