Joined: Dec 22 2001 Posts: 32125 Location: The Corridor of Uncertainty
To be fair to Kear our attacking shape has been massively hindered by the injuries to Keyes and Milnes and the fallout with Chisholm. Our loss of bunch of props at the beginning of the season hasn’t helped.
It’s hard to chuck the ball around if you’re playing with your umpteenth combination of playmakers or lack go forward because the big men are injured.
It’s no coincidence that we’ve looked better in attack since Keyes returned. We out scored York in terms of tries yesterday so must be doing something right.
You could say that all teams get injuries and to an extent I agree. However I also factor in our relative inexperience in some positions and the fact that we’re coming up from L1. I’d say 5th or 6th is probably no more than we deserve and should expect, whatever you believe we’ve spent.
I do agree there are issues and 2020 is the last year of Kear’s contract. Next year I’ll expect to see further improvement across the board. The team has a lot of bad habits and tends to cut corners in a lot of ways. I expect the coach to slowly sort these issues out and get rid of players that aren’t up to it. Given that Kear didn’t recruit a large part of the squad I expect next year to be much more a side that he’s put together.
I agree that Ryan has lost a little bit of form. It happens. As for Crossley I’d be very surprised if he isn’t our biggest metre maker with Connor Farrell. They both have issues, e.g Crossley for landing on his back and having a really slow PTB or Farrell for running too laterally. I think their plus points outweigh the negatives for now. Magrin and Bustin have moments when they lose concentration in defence and I think that will see both out of the door at the end of the season.
On Mini I agree with tigertot's point. We need him involved more. I'm still waiting for the link with Keyes we saw used so well last year to get going again. I also think he needs more support. More often than not he creates space when he runs inside but nobody runs a line in support. That's a wider issue too. Our support play isn't good enough and players too often stand and admire a teammate's run rather than back up.
"If you start listening to the fans it won't be long before you're sitting with them," - Wayne Bennett.
Here are the goal-kicking percentages for the season to date.
Minchella 73% Lilley 75% Keyes 77%
John Kear has repeatedly said throughout the season that his goalkicker needs to be at 85-90%.
It was mentioned in the commentary yesterday that Bulls have been involved in 11 matches where the score has been less than 6 either way. Does anyone know how many of the matches we have lost would have been won had we had a 85% lick rate.
Joined: Dec 22 2001 Posts: 32125 Location: The Corridor of Uncertainty
Stockwell & Smales wrote:I think we must be held up over the line more than any team playing. Is this because we can't think of anything else to put on close to the line?
That’s occurred to me too.
I’d love to know how many times we’ve handed the ball over to the opposition on the 6th tackle too rather than put in a kick. That drives me nuts as it does when Kear is a co-commentator and says something like “it’s not a bad place to hand the ball over”. To me it’s poor play unless it was a genuine attempt to score on the last play. Often we hand it over when we seem to run out of ideas.
Interesting stat – we average 34 points scored per game since Keyes came back. Before then we averaged 19 points a game.
"If you start listening to the fans it won't be long before you're sitting with them," - Wayne Bennett.
Maccbull_BigBullyBooaza wrote: Hope the lad that knocked out Evans gets a season ending injury because a ban is too much to ask for. Player protection isn’t a consideration.
Tried without evidence!!! You are starting to sound like uncle John.
Lambi63 wrote:Tried without evidence!!! You are starting to sound like uncle John.
Suggest you take a look at the highlights reel for the evidence... Evans takes a blatant swing to the mush from Whiteley and should have probably been binned at the very least.
Ultimately it was missed by both the ref and the linesman and ended up in a try from the immediate set of six, rather ironically from Whiteley.
Again another example where York have been on the end of some good luck/bad call from the officials.
Don't think i'm biased...
...i'm just very narrow minded!!!!!!!
Joined: Nov 05 2011 Posts: 4828 Location: Shuddersfield
Maccbull_BigBullyBooaza wrote:It is their cup final but these are people that sing championes ole ole ole about finishing first in league one... ...last year.
How many cup finals are there? Lol!
Hear All, See All, Say Nowt. Eat All, Sup All, Pay Nowt. And if Tha ever does Owt for Nowt, Allus do it for Thissen.
bullinenemyland wrote:Suggest you take a look at the highlights reel for the evidence... Evans takes a blatant swing to the mush from Whiteley and should have probably been binned at the very least.
Ultimately it was missed by both the ref and the linesman and ended up in a try from the immediate set of six, rather ironically from Whiteley.
Again another example where York have been on the end of some good luck/bad call from the officials.
It’s as clear as day on the video. The touch judge is stood in front of it too.
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