Rovers need to stick together it was only going to be a tough year if you would have had all your best players available you would av challenged for 8th I think, but with the luck you have had and a thin squad with not really any quality replacement's of the standard needed you are on a hiding to nothing.
I agree with the first poster giving some young lads a run out like Cater can do no harm they bring enthusiasm and right now that's what you need you never known how good they are until you try them Jez Littern was nearly MOM for us yesterday Lane has been outstanding give some of your youngsters a go what have you to lose now at least they will have experience for any middle 8 games if that's where you end up

I agree about the salt. But we look smaller than most teams, and undoubtedly struggle in the yardage battle and in contact, with all that entails.

There’s a counter narrative I’ve seen that our lack of size isn’t such a big problem and tbf I risk overstating it through repetition. But it’s based on us ‘holding our own’, rather than winning the physical battle, almost as if we’ve accepted that option is off the table.

I don’t want to put pressure on young men whose frames are not naturally suited to carrying extra weight, because that can lead to a dangerous place. However, in my ignorance, it looks like our recruitment and conditioning is out of step with much of the league.

There are so many imponderables, that it isn’t worth worrying much about imo. Assuming you’d specifically want to avoid those away fixtures, you’re swapping an expectation of getting 1.7 of them for 1.3. You could get 4 home games and those be your three away games, or vice versa. Most likely it’ll be one or two.

It’d make my click bait ‘top 5 in my reasons why it’d be nice to beat Widnes’, but only just.

I actually think the teams conditioning is back to where it was in the Morgan era. It’s the recruitment policy that seems to have back fired, going for lighter more mobile forwards who are grafters but through no fault of their own are unable to win the contact rather than size and impact. Unfortunately the squad are carrying too many players of this ilk.

In the Morgan era I think, to some degree, there was enough quality around that a different approach was more feasible - for us and some of our rivals. Mobility didn't always work then (England at the 2008 WC for example, and we still took the odd hammering), but it was a bit more likely.

As quality has become harder to find, I think there's been a tendency to rely a bit more on athleticism/power to compensate. Cas have taken a different approach, and won a lot of games too. But we seem to be unthreateningly underpowered [iand[/i conservative. I suspect our squad has really good fitness levels (as opposed to strength), and is trying to tire out bigger opponents. But even Sugar Ray Robinson struggled and lost when stepping up to light heavyweight - and realistically we ain't a RL equivalent of Sugar Ray Robinson.

Tbf, I think Sandercock's Weyman, Poore, Langley and Costigan 2014 round of recruitment was trying to get us that physical dominance, but none of them made it to the start line in 2015.

Always had a lot of respect for Mick. Retired in 2015 with dignity after his knee surgery.

He returned home to run a farm if I remember right , he knew he wasn’t for to play and was taking up a cap space so he did the right thing for himself and more importantly the club , respect to the guy.

Unlike Campese who mugged the club off .