I don't agree that 16/17 paper over the cracks, we not only won the cup but where very competitive in the league and probably should have won the GF in 17.

We built a good squad of overseas and local players and had a couple of good young players coming through. Unfortunately Radford made errors in recruitment and retention, released the wrong ones and kept some too long.

That should have been the start of a long successful period for our club, we just didn't get it right.

That is fair comment, although I think we sometimes have a collective memory gap of how poor we were under Radford immediately before the cup wins.

What is clear is that recruitment (Motu Tony obviously a large part of it) was crucial, and carried out very well; certainly has been very far from the case since.

Totally agree, it's clear Tony had a eye for talent or certainly had some good connections.

Good post…just seemed as though after 16/17 Radford had achieved the holy grail and took his eye of it and let the team slide and coupled with decisions on contracts and bringing players back and totally not trusting our youngsters.Who from the young ones did we let go…..Rawsthorne,Logan.kitten,Tyson-Wilson?Lancaster?..he’d sooner sign a Liam colbon than let youth have a go

Litten amd Abdul, both would have improved us then and now.

He didn't handle ever of them very well, also more or less gave them away, sure we swapped Litten for an academy winger called Speed.

This is one of the anomalies/curiosities of following a sporting club.

If you have a liking for a particular Tv program or Film franchise, and it starts to go off a bit, you tend to switch to watching something else that takes your fancy (maybe something similar or possibly something completely different).

Same with a particular band or singer. You might like a few records they make, but when they begin to lose their way a bit (as acts tend to do over time), you simply go find something/someone else to boogie along to.

But it's not like that when it comes to a sports team. I suspect most on here have been following their club (Fc in our case) since they were relatively young. Now, because we have hit one of our downturn periods, it isn't simply a case of upping sticks and trotting off to support another team, be it Wigan, Saints, Leeds or (god forbid!!) those from the dark-side.

In a sport like RL, you either follow one act for the rest of your days, or you walk away from the sport completely. There is no half-way house in this case.

You're right, in virtually every other aspect of our lives, none of us would accept the level of underperformance, certainly since 2017, that we have put up with.

But, as I said, it's a curious anomaly with sport, that you are either in or out completely, and I guess most of us on this board are still in (through habit, loyalty, blind faith, whatever?) hoping that from somewhere the club finds its way once again. We just can't quite see where the somewhere is right now! but we are hanging in there because we have nowhere else to go except to walk away from the sport completely.

That winter we decided to sign squad players just to fill the reserve team up was madness. I know the RFL were making noises that clubs supporting the Reserve league would be looked opon favourably but no other team in SL history has signed lower league players just to try and win a reserve league.

In fairness to the club we didnt need Abdull and Sneyd, and Sneyd was still fairly young there was no need for a younger replacement.

Also 6again has helped Jez Litten, and we werent to know that rule change was coming.

. Nail on head. Wish sometimes it didn't have us by the short and curlies and we could walk away. But as my dad told me. Once your in your IN .

There is one qiuck fix which costs nothing but could make us into a team that competes and thats fix the indiscipline.
It cant be that difficult
Put a bucket in the changing rooms.have a tariff for red card,yellow card,six again,daft penalty,missed tackle,dropped ball.
You have to make the players think,concentrate and take responsibility on the field
You can put some changing room fun into it but cards are serious so start the red card at £100