Hampton 22

The great attacking leads in our forward line from ... hey, that's not Mitch Clark, it's Colin Garland.

Trying to better understand our on-field performance this year, I've crunched the numbers. Does our scoring drop off as the game goes on? Do our opponents beat us more convincingly in the latter parts of games? If the answer is yes, the stats are pointing to us running out of legs. Nine lamentable rounds: 36 quarters. Average scores this year for quarters 1-4 are 16, 17, 15 and 14 points, respectively. So not much revealed there, apart from an inability to score. Perhaps a slight drop off after half time. More instructive though is the fact that as we get slightly worse during a game, the opposition lifts. They've booted on average 25, 32, 33 and 29 points against us. Most telling is the extent to which we are being thumped. We've been outscored by an average of 60% in 1st quarters, 90% in 2nd quarters, 130% in 3rd quarters, and have contained our opponents to 100% above our final stanza scores. The verdict? I say that the figures show either we aren't as fit as opposition teams or we are simply more weary. If games lasted just one quarter, we'd have 3 wins by now. Conversely, we have not won a single quarter for the year following the long break. We've played 36 quarters; we've won but 5. Verdict: We need to get fitter. Alternatively, if training is too harsh at the moment, reducing the pressure may see us running out games better during the rest of the year. The message

So much worse than last year. I'm concerned that there's a rift between players and coach.