Ye, it's gonna be a biggie after coming off the drubbing against Wire.

We might even get on the scoreboard.

Radders could attract players like Frank "the tank" Pritchard to play on our bench. Smith can only attract Okunbor as our starter.



Mini, Sika snd Ellis in the back row and Frank off the bench is why we were competing at that time. Smith gets a star like Clifford, and he can't keep him happy.



We don't appreciate how good we had it with Radders. Bonaire was adamant we'd be better off without him.

Thank the lord for IMG

Things have changed financially since 2013-2015 when those players agreed to join. The gap between SL and NRL is wider, older NRL players arent interested in coming for a last big pay day any more and there were no marquee players then it was a level playing field if you spent the cap.



The clubs recruitment has been poor for years but you cant compare what happened a decade ago to different circumstances now.

Rubbish!



Since then, Salford have reached a Challenge cup final and a Super league grand final, and they get raped of players every season. And Leigh have won the challenge cup and invested their winnings in signing a state of origin player.

So the Wigan game where we were told by some, that it was just a meaningless friendly really turned out not to be so meaningless after all

Yes in terms of competition points it was but in terms of preparation and how far we had evolved as a team it told us everything.

Not very far.

Tony Smith after each friendly saying how we were going to improve our discipline, well I've seen no evidence to prove that at all.

And like the Wigan game another ill disciplined and unorganised performance.

There's been no improvement at all.

A clueless spine devoid of any creativity.

Slow ball movement and lack of runners or support.

London aside ( fingers crossed) it's hard to see where we'll win a game let alone score.

Tonight I thought Martin stood up well along with Ashworth and Smith.

It's going to be a long slog yet again but I'm buckled in for the ride.

Moylan played SOO for 1 series 8 years ago and seemingly has an iffy injury record and I doubt we had the cash to outbid Leigh. We are shopping in Home Bargains with our debt issues.



Salford had an amazing recruitment for 2019, but last time I checked they are also now skint and have 24 players on their books.

Smith confirming that Sutcliffe had a bug, but surely you dont name a player whos ill in your starting lineup? Dont think his inclusion would have made a huge difference given how bad we were in other areas but that has got me baffled.

What did Adam do with our winnings from back to back Challenge cup wins?



Radford was left to only bring in Albert Kelly who's career was stagnating at Rovers. Radders made him into a man of Steel contender, a year after turning Houghton into our only ever man of steel winner.. Then Radders had to find cheap gems, which he did, like Ratu and Satae, but he wasn't given the money to replace his leaders with other leaders. because the funds just were not rewarded to him for his efforts. He had to bring Ellis out of retirement at nearly 40 years of age.

I know a lot of posters think that Brad Fash and Joe Cator are too small and would prefer them out of the team. Well you got your wish tonight for 75 minutes. You got the big pack you desired.



How did that go for you?



Me personally, I think Brad Fash is our best player. We missed him big time tonight.

Anyone for a 1 match barometer reading ?

What a pile of Shoite that was



We have a head coach who says that he Hopes for a better season !



It’s the fans that Hope not

The Coach



The coach should expect and literally demand success - at the minimum



Uncle Tony is just that - too nice and he’s become the Buddy instead of the

Boss that many need



A motivational boss !



Oh well - long season where we fail to deliver apart from occasional wins meaning AP won’t make any coaching changes

Think our pack could actually be ok, if (big if) we can sort out the discipline. Thought yellow card aside Ese Ese was good (can't see his stats on the SL site), Sao offloaded loads and Ashworth was decent. Ock was hit and miss did some good things, but also bad moments. Can't judge him on one game.



Our real issue in our backs and halfbacks, backs aren't big or strong enough, dominated nearly every tackle, although thought Martin did well. But having 3 out of 4 starting backs doesn't help. Walker is like Briscoe, all heart, but not sure he has the creative skills to be a top fullback.



Halfbacks are a real issue, desperately need Trueman back, can't fully judge Brown on that game, but I'd be looking to play him 9.



IMO our best pivots would be



1 Hoy

6 Trueman

7 Smith

9/13 Brown/Houghton



Let's be honest with our best side we are at best in about 8th place, a few injuries like we have already 10th/11th.



Not 100% convinced by Smith, but can't see anyone better, he has to improve us this year and get recruitment right.



Could really do with Pearson finding some money from somewhere to bring in 3 quality overseas players and a couple of domestic ones.

Utter shambles, it was as bad as I feared. Just thankful that Hiku missed four kicks and Rovers were not brilliant.



Nu Brown largely anonymous, no ideas going forward, discipline awful, Pele looks a hothead and players going down like ninepins.



I can see Pele picking up 3-4 games, EseEse one match and SAo given his record may cop a ban too.



No positives at all last night. It looks like it's going to be a long old season.

Looks like we’ve signed three Lauakis and a Sam Obst as it stands. Long season ahead.

The performance did have a very strong 'Agar era' vibe.



Just a shame we don't have a Willie Manu to throw it too

I know it's the way he likes his team to play, but I think the team really didn't look comfortable playing Tonyball, we shouldn't be trying to throw it round at every opportunity when we don't deserve to...the players confidence was shot last night and they looked nervous chucking it round on the 1st/2nd tackles so much and it led to mistakes which then put more pressure back on us. We should have gone back to basics when it was obvious plan A wasn't working, radders style 5 drives and clear the lines to calm us down and keep rovers off our line. Can't remember a game where we've put so little pressure on a teams line. Any sort of good position we had was spoilt with a knock on on play 1 or 2...don't think we kicked into their in goal until Cam Smiths kick through in about the 74th minute

Another issue was the lack of a real leader out there last night, someone to calm the team down, refocus them, adapt to the sending offs, this was a big flaw in Smiths recruiting in the off season...nobody in that squad is true captain material

Haha yes the only item in the playbook - the Manu Miracle

Well the “doom and gloomers” amongst us weren’t wrong. Absolutely nowhere near good enough. I honestly don’t see where our wins are coming from.

This proves Pearson is picking the players to sign. Smith would never go for the dross on show last night but as is rumoured Smith on huge money and wants one last payday. You can tell he doesn’t care, he is a dinosaur and all this loving stuff and players best mates don’t work, it didn’t at Rovers. Pearson storming out at the end was a bit hilarious though.

Pele was obviously riled by something, but what a silly thing to do when it was always going to get seen on the cameras, Sao should have known better but it was a grubby act by Parcell, (was there even a gouge in there), who should also get a ban . I thought Ese Ese's was instinctive, so maybe he'll get a fine .

But abject attacking and soft penalties seem our trademark this year, and the lack of halfbacks was never more evident against a team that had two very good ones. Hard to see where we can improve though with Truman not ready and after a bad injury, he won't be at the races from the get go.

We definitely need a lottery winner to buy us or I fear its a return to the Hetherington/Agar era.

The Pele red card was an absolute joke. Not sure I’m going to be able to follow this game much longer……

Bingo.

Why did we actually sign Walker? We had a good quota fullback in Hoy and a promising backup in Littenn...if we were planning to release Hoy then fair enough but I don't understand why we've signed him, feels like the Briscoe v motu tony situation again. Maybe the Walker money should've gone on an extra second row

We're already as bad the Agar era, he finished 11th, 12th, 6th and 8th (some years had 14 teams) I make that to be an average finish of 9th so not any different to our last two years.