Quote Jo Jumbuck="Jo Jumbuck"I can see how it will have looked a bit like that lately, I haven't got involved about conditioning and bus riding myself, but to be honest they are I expect opinions and may well have some relevance to team moral, but I wouldn't argue that .
My own views are more about the PA discussion I am not taken by him as a coach, that's just my opinion, but if anyone asks me for evidence, I will say, look at our league position, Look at the quality of game we played for most of last season, tell me where our International standard players have gone.
All that will be washed over as irrelevant by a snowstorm of bad luck stories from some.
I have given PA plenty of credit for league position " based upon good defence " and I hope we get it back, He has rightly had lots of credit for the success we have had in finishing amongst the so called big boys, so is he now immune from any blame now we are nowhere.
I am not over bothered about league position unless we win the big one, I am more bothered about what we play like and what we look like on the field , particularly on TV.
But you are right we do all want the same thing, despite what some say, we just have different views about how to get there, but that doesn't mean anything for me, other than we agree to disagree'"
I agree with most of your post. The reactions both to criticism and to last Friday's result to me are further indicators of our mentality of fans, which i believe also is one shared by the club. Because of our quick rise from the basement club of the RL in the 80's to superleague whipping boys in the noughties, and finally to contenders over the last 5 years our expectations are lower than other clubs with squads of similar standards. The fact is we HAVE underachieved over the last 5 years considering the strength of our squad during that period, but because we are always comparing with what came before we have a 'we are lucky even to be here' mentality which is holding the club back. Am i glad we won on Friday , of course, is a little bit of me annoyed that maybe if we had lost a few more we might have changed the coach.. honestly, yes. We now seem eternally grateful that *maybe* we wont be in the million pound playoff match... wow.
Fact is, we needed to be written off for a game before we could finally pull together a performance. Once the pressure was off (i.e. we were given no chance of winning top v bottom, underdog mentality) we could finally find the composure to not completely fold at the end of the match like we have been doing in all previous matches this year. In all those matches we lost in the last ten minutes, continually dropping the ball, bombing chances or letting in soft tries. Could PA change this mentality (the same mentality that cost us in playoff games time after time after time btw), no. It took an external factor to do this, as has often been the case for us, our small club mentality of a 'giantkilling' act needed to kick in mentally for us to do this.
I know i will get slated for my opinions, and that's fine, but at least it gives some people something to think about. Until we get a coach/management who can go about changing this smallclub mentality and make us BELIEVE we deserve to be where we have been over the last few years we will not progress. There's one good thing at least we wont have to sit through more cringeworthy capitulations in the playoffs this year, because i think we have all seen quite enough of that. We can continue to celebrate the hub-cap, and agree that it was a massive achievement 'because of where we used to be'. We need a total change of mentality that concentrates on the strength of our current squad and not an ingrained idea of our place in the RL pecking order as a yardstick for measuring success.
