We are told that we have a top coach yet he selects Johnson who cannot defend and has had a nightmare in pre season games . He has Walton , Hall and Tansey who have all shown up well in pre season and does not select them . Instead Arundel gets a game who has shown nothing in pre season . He plays Arona at 13 - why . He signs Antony Tupu who is obviously a busted flush , then he selects Tupu to play who has done nothing in pre season . He selects softy Anderson who gets dominated in every game he plays yet leaves Yates and Anakin out of the squad . The point I am making is that our coach is making some really basic selection errors and those errors cost us the game today.
Hope changes are made for next week .

No HE isn't!

he has wrecked every club he has been to - never won a thing- he is good for the first year(he did what we needed him to do last year- we should of got rid of after that)

if he stays for full season we will be relegated.

Jeez. You baffle me. You really do.

Your having a laugh with this one

Nice to get positive feedback!

Calm down, you'll have a completely different team for the middle 8's !

I cannot disagree more unless you were watching a different game. The pass Johnson tried was on and would have put BJB into a gap but he dropped it. I remember Johnson getting back to make the tackle into touch to stop a certain Widnes try at the start of the second half.
I don't remember Anderson going backwards and Arona ran hard. It's our first game and in my view we have made progress on last season. I would expect that if Hall, Walton or Tansey had played you would have people on here saying exactly the same about them.
We all I suppose have our favourite villains but not today, mistakes were made but it's only game one and let's face it we won our first two last season and look what happened then.

I'd go as far as saying the same people criticising would use these selections to criticise too. The facts aren't the issue.
I'll defend anyone's right to have an opinion but unfortunately some just hang around waiting for a sniff of bad news and want to show they knew all along.
They are never posting when we win.

Not trolls, they are vultures. I really don't understand why but that's just the diversity of life.

Whatever he is, he's a country mile ahead of any alternative.

I despair I really do, one game in and already the knives are sharpening. A couple of costly errors today other than that we matched Widnes man for man, won the second half and imo the difference in performance from last season to this was an almighty chasm. Yes there is still work to do but come on we were tonked 80 odd 50 odd 60 odd and more last season, give the guy a break for goodness sake.

Good thread this.

He's the best we could ask for and the best we could expect. We're not a great team (yet), but there were lots of improvements across the pitch today compared to most of last season. Give the man time to get his selection balanced and find who fits in which position best. He's nearly there with it and hopefully he can settle the lads before the big game next week

Didn't someone predict this thread a couple of weeks ago?

It's a fair debate, albeit there is not much support for it at this point.

My opinion - if we can't beat a bottom 4 team at home, regardless of the where's and whys, then we have a long, long season ahead. We are banking on getting better - do we not think that other teams will do exactly the same? For me, I don't get the acceptance of failure and our mentality of trying to pull the positives from what was a gift of a win to Widnes.

Brian Smith, Wayne Bennet, whoever, you are judged on results. There is a bloody long way to go and I really fear that there are few 'lower hanging fruits' for us to pick than a home game against a team that play on plastic!

Scared - proper scared!

I do agree with some people - to a certain extent.

But what can Brian Smith do about Tom Johnstone's brain fart - and BJB not fielding a pretty easy kick.
We gifted 12 points from these basic errors, easy to say but without those 2 gifts we probably would have won!

I think the op needs to give his head a shake.

Over the past 2 seasons the club, on the field of play, went backwards severely.
We scraped to safety on the last day of the season and we start again this time.

Wakefield are still on the smallest playing budget in SL so, in a straight line, we should finish 12th.

So, we have replaced half of our squad and folk expect us to be winning our first game.

Have we improved from last season, clearly yes.
Will we improve further as the season progresses, again, clearly yes

I'm embarrassed to be included with some of the "supporter's" when a thread like this can eve be posted, its just ridiculous.

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Agree with this. Sadly though, the club has had this mentality for several years now.

As for BS, I think he's done a great job shoring up the defence, but offensively we are still rubbish.

OK I'll bite ! I think you will as well after yesterday - who did you play?

Smith did make mistakes yesterday johnstone been shocking all pre season but played arona is not a loose forward anderson not played cos of injuies but comes straight in when lets be honest hes no good anyway and walton and hall should of played


Im sure smith is a class coach but he still aint winning v SL teams ues we beat 3 championship clubs but thats all.time will tell

As I've said on another thread, we finished 11 points adrift of the team who finished in 11th last year. Looking deeper than that we were awful in 95% of our performances, no structure in attack or defence, no fight, seemingly no pride, no resilience, not fit enough and a very very poor culture across a the senior players and coaches.

That's one hell of a long way to come back from and we won't bridge that gap in one season!

Talk of top 8 is far too big, yes we should have that as a goal but to have that as an expectancy is delusional IMO. We may well finish 12th again and if we do then as disappointing as that will be we would again have to look deeper at the performances.
Are we fitter
Did we compete in every game
Do the players play to a structure in attack and defence
Is there pride in the performances
Can we see the emergence of a positive, winning culture developing at the club

If we get those things and yet still finish bottom, as disappointing as that will be, then we will have moved forward significantly.

If we can get off the bottom even flirt with the idea that we might reach the S8s then that is huge improvement in one season.

The team was in a huge hole and we are just attempting to climb out of it

Think we are been harsh on Johnstone the kid is young and going to make mistakes. He is our own has speed to burn, he took a excellent catch in the 1st half. The try under the sticks in the 2nd half was pathetic that wasn't his fault was it?. The one in the first half was appauling if BJB caught it he was away. BJB been a SL players for over 6 years and he had a real stinker yesterday. We need to protect Johnstone he has the makings of a real good player just needs to use his head more which hopefully will come.

Sort of agree with regards to looking at each match individually. Unfortunately though if the end result is the same ie we finish 12th then that's no improvement in my eyes and shows we are destined to remain in the void between the best of the championship and the worst of the super league.

What concerns me the most is there is one aspect. at the club that hasn't been changed - the back room staff. We are still lumbered with the back room staff that oversaw the slide into the abyss we were in last year and partly the year before.

Anyone remember 'softy' Anderson driving to the posts holding off 3 tacklers and offering the ball once, twice ,three times to the non existent support.

You've gleaned all that from one game? How exactly? We lost at home to Widnes 30-18 last year, hardly a massive difference. We also won our first two games so we are theoterically already in a worse position that we were 12 months ago, not that it matters one jot at this stage. Fitness also didn't look an issue in any of those games so that card can't be used either.

The fact of the matter is we have just lost at home to a team many was predicting as one who could well finish below us, one who themselves looked scratchy in attack as most teams do at this time of the season. They bombed scoring chances that a month down the line they probably wouldn't do so they were there for the taking. Yes we made daft errors that gave them points but we did exactly the same last season. How many times in press conferences did either Webster or Smith say we were our own worst enemies? Plenty. It is a habit that has to stop starting now.

Quite simply it is too early to tell either way whether we will end up any better or not. Smith has a history of been able to make significant short term successes with a club but then it tends to peter out quite quickly. He is still relatively early on in his time with us so i would expect further improvements to come over the coming weeks but whether that happens or not is just impossible to tell at this point. I'd rather have him and his experience and knowhow as opposed to anyone else but nothing has been proved during his time here either way as yet. There is a long way yet to go but for the sake of confidence both in the dressing room and on the terraces what is needed quite quickly is a sustained period of good performances, 4 or 5 back to back where we are in the game all the way and hopefully some league points are picked up. Only then will we know for sure whether Smith is on the right track. I have a nervous confidence that things will improve but like TRB has said, i'm scared it won't.

Pure comedy gold, saw the match did you?