bing181

This, this and this. Whole team balance looks out of whack without him, both on and off the field. If you're looking for reasons as to why a team might lose its way, start with loss of leadership and experience. Having Melksham out for a year isn't helping either as he's in a similar category, same with Lever over a shorter period.

If ever there was a post to prove my point it's this.

That's literally his job.

Thank god some of the posters here are nowhere near the football department.

Tholstrup, and play him for the rest of the year. Time to make selections for the future rather than the present. Unfortunately. Not sure that any other changes are more than rearranging the deck chairs.

Bad form to quote my own post, but should have added a postscript to that as there's a fourth player. Angus Brayshaw. It was playing Brayshaw through the middle that let us release Petracca forward. Unfortunately, there's no-one even close to stepping into his shoes.

Much of this turns on three players for mine: - Oliver. Missed most of the pre-season and has never got going. His under-performance around the ball is costing us badly, especially when we're having to play Petracca more forward. - Lever. Back line is all at sea without him and May is exposed. - Melksham. Is to the forward line what Lever is to the backline, the general. Without him we're lacking leadership, experience and smarts.

Drafting high-contest vs high-skill players got us a premiership, but is coming back to hurt us.

This.

Nothing to do with it. Sacking coaches is generally a backward step, it's all on the players. Both North and the Suns brought in "star" coaches and the differences are marginal at best. Improvement can only come through the list.

Maybe the players could kick straight? Just an idea.

Laughable. Not going anywhere. Deal with it.

Whose job is it to execute the standard? All on the players.

All comes down to this, everything else is just blah blah blah. Turnovers cost matches.

If only we had a forward line. Bombing into packs like this when there's no-one there who can take the marks.

Or use 12ft.io which does it for you.

Completely. That plus no Kozzie, JVR and Brayshaw.

Thank god for that.

Living in the past.

We're missing the general in that defense, May looks all at sea without him. As for the mids, no point living in the past. Oliver is half the player he has been for reasons we all understand, Petracca is having to play forward to make up for our lack of forwards, we've lost Brayshaw, so that leaves Viney - who needs those others around him. There were centre bounces today where we had Viney plus Sparrow and Neal-Bullen, not many AA's there.

As I said, all on the players.

I don't know how people can keep saying this, it's bordering on delusional. We have a few stars. After that ...

Nothing to do with Goodwin. Turnovers, contested possession, clearances ... all on the players. Though even there, we just don't have the cattle and there are players out there who are out of their depth.

We've managed to paper over the cracks for quite a while, but you can only get away with that for so long. List has some serious holes and hard to say where solutions are going to come from, at least in the short term. Almost time to start playing the kids, couldn't be much worse.

cough ...