Unfortunately we WERE spectacularly bad. No structure or organisation in attack, leading to players misreading the set plays and BOTH halves passing to the opposition. To be clear these were not intercepts, they were passes behind an attacking line to a second man who wasn't there and both Deacon and Sykes were guilty. What amused me were people getting upset at the lack of a call for a knock on after opposition players dived on the ball. We gift them possession and then want the referee to give us the ball back and get upset when he doesn't. The calls of forward on almost every pass from Harlequins also show how increasingly desperate we are! Let's be clear we showed little or no creativity, compounded by a lack of go forward and looked like a team of individuals some of whom were trying, some of whom had already given up on the season or know their fortunes lie elsewhere.

Defensively we were hopeless, people coming out of the line, trying to put hits on rather than tackle (Scruton, Morrison and others), messing around and needlessly gifting field position and possession through penalties etc.
It wasn't that we weren't bad, it was that we were awful against poor opposition and that made us look average whilst losing.

A lack of structure in defense and attack, poor discipline, little team coherence and motivation indicate poor coaching. It's not a mystery, it's not unfathomable, it's not a strange phenomenon unseen elsewhere. It's the cumulative result of poor coaching that cannot be hidden, disguised or otherwise wished away by the possibility of some alternative future scenario where the poor coach becomes the skillful harbinger of a great Bradford revival based upon youth, which is only achievable through his stewardship, or because no one else wants the job.

Personally I think the 're-building' will begin when Macca goes, the evidence points to a modest improvement in youth recruitment being used as evidence of some behind the scenes masterplan, when the truth is Macca is out of his depth, Hood isn't brutal enough to move on and the financial implications are bad either way. Meaning we're 'muddling through' meaning losing our walk up attendance, our profile in the City and managing to alienate a good proportion of the core of fans remaining.

Roughly translated - I will conveniently ignore this issue as I have a clear agenda with someone else on the board who does not agree with me.

He is hardly gonna say anything different though is he?

However, this is the man who promised that the bulls would turn it around in the second half of the season so I will take everything the guy says with a large pinch of salt.




Have you heard a whisper that McNamara is about to start clearing his desk?

Again, its pretty hard to argue with any of that. Unfortunately.

Yep u were poor against a team that is struggling for form. Your crowd was also poor in terms of noise. First time I have been to Odsal and heard no vocal support. What has happened to crowd atmosphere? Supporting your team through rough times is important and staying slient does not help the team despite what is going on (or not) on the pitch.

Not at all. I stand by what I (and I see some others) said. You give the impression of rushing to get on here to peddle your unhealthy obsessive agenda with seeming great authority whenever we lose (even though, unlike nearly everyone else who posts, you have not even seen the match). Yet, on those all-too-rare occasions we win, you have little if anything of value to say.

Whilst I have no intention of wasting my time proving my point with statistics - although I have no doubt whatsoever I could with ease if I had to - it is worth noting just by way of example that you posted a mere three times on the main post-Celtic thread. One of those posts was a flippant OT post about the coach travel, and the other two were (your usual) heavily-sarcastic posts which offered little by way of satisfaction that we had actually won something. That's all.

From a very quick look, you have posted at least eight attacks on the coach already since yesterday evening, in one of which you told another poster to "shut up", and a similar number of times in response to other people taking issue with your posts where you primarily attacked or derided the poster not the issue.

QED.

Red (with whom I exchange opinions and seek opinion etc quite regularly out of the public eye, and whose views I respect even though we often do not agree) raised a fair, if unconnected, point. And I responded to it.

For the avoidance of doubt: my issue is not that you blame Macca for pretty well everything, and I disagree with you. Plenty of others, I suggest probably far more qualified to comment than either you or I, are playing hell about the coaching. My issue is with your destructive sarcastic and relentless campaign, whilst failing to offer practicable constructive solutions or to listen to those who try to point out the limitations in what the club can do.

Sound and wise comments.

I guess you have to have endured what we have endured for the whole season to better appreciate why many (most?) of the fans appear to have pretty well just given up. Those in our little group are certainly as guilty of that as the next man.

Seemed to me that both the players and the fans realised that the play offs were a pipe dream. Unfortunatyely yesterday's performance was fairly typical of this year.

I still think the problem is overwhelmingly poor recruitment. We clearly have a few decent young players coming through and given some good signings could start to move forward again. But we need someone capable of finding and signing the hidden gems, rather than players that flatter to deceive.

I know where you're coming from and I agree to a point regarding trying and motivation, but my take was more worrying, I felt there was lots of individual effort being put in yesterday by the majority of the players (some more than others mind). But it was not applied correctly and was not applied as a team, it was all individual stuff. The couple of times we did link up the play with support players we looked dangerous, like for Nero's try, but that was unplanned off the cuff linking up by basically talented players, it was not a planned move or a result of months of drill work and practice.

I think the players are trying, but they dont have the correct structures and cant seem to attack or defend as a team for sustained periods (like 2 40 min spells

), which they will practice doing Im sure, and that is the coaches fault, not getting the practice/game plan to be applied on game day, or getting the practice/game plan wrong from the outset. And if people think its more that the players cannot play at the required level despite good coaching, then IMO the coaching staff ultimatly have to take responsibility for signing/resigning players that are not up to it (even taking into account the unfavourable position this current coaching team inherited, that cannot be a catch all get out clause for all the errors we are seeing week in week out)

McNamara will still be here next year and as well as rethinking his approach to coaching the recuitment of how he spends Solomona, Morrison, BJ, Newtons hefty wedge of the cap will be key to if we can move on [isignificantly [/ifrom this year (shouldn't be too hard to just improve on this years effort really) A new hooker, done so we'll wait and see on that one, two new halfs please (I wish), a new (unlikely), at least 1 new winger, and some ball playing skills at 13 wouldn't go amiss either whilst Im wishing for stuff..... I'm not holding my breath.

There's a link on another thread that says we've signed Brett Delaney Centre. I'll try and find the link.

It may be misplaced blind faith, but I think with a change in some of the senior playing staff and the hard work being done underneath it all, we'll see a much improved club, from 1st team down.

I await to be shot down, but I suppose only time will tell.

Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.

Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.

Delaney has signed for Leeds hasn't he?

Seems so, looks like we get the player with injury history!

Quote ="Spannerz"Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.'" Anyone else spot any parallels with the main article?

Quote ="Spannerz"Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.'" Anyone else spot any parallels with the main article?

I did last night. Obviously its a completely different and not comparable situation though...clearly...

Well no two situations are exactly the same, but the rough out line of the story is similar.

Infact change the names and the detail (scores teams etc) and you could have been reading about us!

Quote ="Spannerz"Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.'" Well it'd be a little bit depressing if we signed Kearney when he has managed less than 12 games a year since Cronulla signed him four years ago, given the reason Glen is off is that we can't keep him on the field because of injuries. I know that their ages are different but Kearney would be a real gamble and is hardly proven in the halves. I hope it's not a desperate move after failing to get Wing.

Quote ="Spannerz"Here's the link. www.leaguehq.com.au/news/lhqnews ... 09704.html Seems we are linked with Kearney Full Back/Stand Off! Ah well time will tell.'" Well it'd be a little bit depressing if we signed Kearney when he has managed less than 12 games a year since Cronulla signed him four years ago, given the reason Glen is off is that we can't keep him on the field because of injuries. I know that their ages are different but Kearney would be a real gamble and is hardly proven in the halves. I hope it's not a desperate move after failing to get Wing.

Er...I think you need to improve the sensitivity of your sarcasm detector!!

Its certainly looking that way. If there is to be a change it would be better sooner rather than later. I suppose its possible that we are lining up an aussie coach but would not be able to announce it until the end of the NRL season. But it doesnt look like we could replace MacNamara before the recruitment for next season is completed.

I haven't been following NRL much recently but it might be interesting to see how many of the coaches of - say - the bottom 3 clubs in the NRL over the past few seasons have kept their jobs. Seeing as they have been dealing with the franchise system longer and are therefore fully aware of all the alleged benefits of franchising - ie no relegation, can bring through youngsters, time to strategically develop a club, no knee-jerk sacking of coaches etc.

Maybe Hood has been discussing the recruitment with our new coach then suggesting it to Macca? Maybe Des Hasler wants to work with a lot of his current team

Its possible but unlikely in the extreme I reckon, and if I were making a change I'd go with a whole new clean sweep and bring in an NRL coach.

But I'll be astonished if McNamara is not here at the start of next season.

Out of interest, I wonder what Hood's limit is for McNamara? He must have one, no more wins this year? No wins in first 10 next year? Missing the playoffs next year??... or just wait until McNamaras contract runs itself out as he doesn't want to to sack him but cant be seen to extend it?

A fellow fan was on about this yesterday seeing as it was odds on that Salford nd Celtic would finish 13th and 14th this season so that means that we are bottom of the established super league clubs.