Gaz Ellis returning as defence coach?

Easy for me to say now in hindsight and fans want to see ‘players giving everything’ but I honestly cringed when I saw those comments before the game. Exactly the wrong message for these players. I honestly think they always try their best but seem to fall apart under any pressure and expectation. When a games already lost they seem to often play better like they have nothing to fear.

Sadly I think we’ll now go on a Bradford style collapse as a club if not go down this season 100% next. At least their supporters saw them win everything before it went off a cliff. Grade A clubs are supposed to be exempt from relegation this season, but we only got a provisional grade A so I think they’ll just revoke that for the official grading and to be honest it would be deserved. We had from April to the Aug transfer deadline with quota places and cap space to improve, we decided as a club not to do that and I fear the league will make an example of us for making a mockery of the competition.

You were saying...

To be fair, the forwards largely did their job of getting us to their line and we played most of the game with one half back.

Not excuses, just the fact of the matter.

Funny you should mention Aydin. Was talking to his sponsor on Wednesday and he was saying how Aydin came out top in the fitness tests they did recently. As you say, he's had a proper pre season under a quality S@C team

Our fanbase and facilities will still save us, and the performance is an average of 3 years so an average finish of 9th10th12th doesn't actually change the score much from the current 8th9th10th and don't forget a team like Toulouse will be scoring something like 12th14th14th.

The problem is how depressing will it get being propped up on off the field scores and the bigger worry is the game will do one of it's usual u-turns and promotion and relegation will be back.

It's clear from watching the team play that Aydin is the fittest there. He can play 80mins and his intensity barely drops.

I think the sad thing for me is I was at a BBQ with a load of fans who’ve gone home and away for years, and now barely even watched the game on tv or cared about the result.

Yeh I'm surrounded by them as you say so sad. But who can blame them or any of us last night a few of us sat in the pub and started talking about our FC watching history we talked how much we have spent in 50 or sixty years of shirts and merch, passes (often for husband wife and kids) away travel, cup finals, semi's etc, trips to France, etc and we thought that we'd probably spent upwards of £40,000 on the club to end up like this. The Bradford analogy mentioned above is a good one.

The fanbase is gone. Next season will be no bigger than that of Salford or Huddersfield.