It's no good comparing us to Leigh, they had three international wingers in their team today, yes they were all well past their prime and wouldn't be anywhere near a top SL side, but there is a level of investment in the Leigh side that no other Championship side can match (maybe Fev can come close). RL isn't like some other sports e.g. football, where a plucky underdog can hold off a much better team, the nature of the game means that semi-pro sides just can't compete with fully pro sides unless there's something very wrong with the fully pro team. They rolled over us because they were bigger and stronger and they can play consistently at a higher tempo. It's not a disgrace to be beaten when it's such a mismatch.

At the start of the season London were a shambles, the last tackle play, if it ever came, was for Moceidreke to hoof it randomly in the air. But with a few key signings in the spine we now attempt some half decent plays, yes we are one dimensional, and yes we lack true quality, but there is competency, shape, structure and patterns, even if there's no plan B, C, D etc...there is at least something resembling plan A, and that makes us competitive against most teams in this division.

I've given up on the myth of 'sustainability', I don't worry about the magical 5k average (I remember hearing this direct from Nic Cartwright's mouth in the bar at The Stoop in 2006), we need to be competitive in this division, and play some attractive RL that will appeal to RL fans in the South East catchment area. Barring a game or two a season I pretty much gave up when we moved to the Hive, and I thought I'd made a mistake coming back this season, but I've enjoyed what I've seen in the second half of the season. We want people seeing competitive, entertaining games, don't worry about SL. If I were the club I'd flood the local area with £5 ticket deals for the Barrow game, we can play entertaining stuff, even if it's not technically great.

I’ll always prioritise the Gold Lounge, as all know, but I do wonder if an extremely slow and sedentary being might be better placed as head of recruitment and retention. Looking forward to the announcement that Eccles and Thurman are taking over and then perhaps we could get cracking on recruitment rather than like last year have to put up with a deluge of departure announcement before we say we’ve retained a couple of kids and some L1 prospects, who we subsequently don’t play much. @the broncosway

Am I alone in thinking this tease of news to come is just a tad childish. They have done this several times & has mostly been a damp squib. If they can release the news (whatever it is) tomorrow you can bet they could do it today. Just get on with it Hughes/Lobster.

Probably playful more than childish but the speed point is important. Whilst we are fannying around telling everyone what they already know, other teams are recruiting.

It was most probably Hughes himself!

And yet here you are....sigh


FWIW I defended Hughes from attacks on these very forums and applauded his stance against the RFL and SL clubs mandate that Lenegan be forced to relinquish his Quins shareholding. I felt that it was shortsighted for the other clubs to pull 80% of our fiscal support without fully understanding the impact it would have on us and I don't envy Hughes having to fork out £1,500,000 + a year...........
......but here we are, 15 years later and he has undoubtedly shown he was out if his depth and the RFL and SL leaders bear some responsibility for that I am afraid.