England was our best player by far, BJB was poor in returning the ball, and interesting listening to Luke dorn marshalling his defence, calling the shots, I have seen nothing of that from BJB, he has not lived up to the billing of his previous career thus far, but just my opinion as I saw it today,

Seem to remember about 5 years ago didnt Steve Southern have his contract terminated, this was about 8 games into i think a 3 year deal. There was also the time when as a cost cutting exercise, the club terminated contracts of players over a certain age.

Maybe if we hadn't have given contracts to average three quarters, in Arundel, Gibson, Tupou and Walton, then maybe we would have had the finance to bring in another half back.

Probably irrelevant now, but we should have sold Kirmo on in 2013, when he had a decent price tag on him, rather than offload the players we did, every one of the players offloaded in 2013 are far better than what we have now

Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing.

Back when we were selling our best players to stay alive, Kirmond was "not for sale" and every other "decent" player went over a 4-6 week period.

Where we are now and with Kirmond's injuries and lack of form, it would have been a good move but, at the time, the club did the right thing.

The following season all of the players sold became injured at pretty much the same time so it turned out to be a shrewd bit of business.

Having said that we look desperately short of game breakers.

Smith, Lauititi and McShane gone, we just don't seem to have much in the locker, although it's hard to create anything if you are not going forward.

Positives

Howarth gave everything.
BJB didn't look bad.
England had a decent game.
Widnes hammered Leeds by more than they beat us!

Negatives

Scrotum doesn't appear to have the guts for it.
Kirkmond is a shadow of the version we had on loan and for 12-18 months after he signed.
Nowhere near enough urgency in defence, can't give genuinely quality pivots like Cas have time to do what they want.
Lyne and Gibson seemed to part like the red sea a couple of times for no apparent reason.
Finn's kicking was woeful (compare to that of Gale and the precision of the bombs).
Cats looked and extremely good side and will beat much better sides than us.

Southern agreed a pay off, although whether he ever actually received it is a moot point thanks to Elston. The other instance you quote is when we went belly up and ended up in a cva so unless we want to go down route its a no go. Fact is our recruitment has left us using too much cap up on too many average squad players and we have very little room for manoeuvre.

It is frustrating.

We probably have about £125k-£150k worth of salary sitting in the stands week in week out not getting the game time.

That money would go a long way towards a very good half back

Do the club actually have a chief exec these days. I know Kath replaced Elston, but she has gone, and I havent ever heard her been replaced

To be fair, we handled Cas pretty well for 30 - 35 mins, but did a lot of defending in the process. My issue is that we were just so dominated in the middle, our backs had no where to go.

The defence lurched between good and horrendous, at least 3 of their tries came from busting through 3,4 or 5 attempted tackles - not good enough in SL.

Having said that, I thought we were unfortunate again at certain times in the first half, that bizarre shoulder charge call, Finn not quite being able to get to the loose ball which let them go over in the corner.

I think we can play a lot better as a group but need to start gelling fast and as that comes on, speed up the attack.

Positives, well we’ve got HKR next week, with the numbers they have out, we won’t have a better chance than in a long time. Then the next home game against the French could go either way.

Negatives, the game in-between those two.

We're not in the World Club Challenge are we?

Agree with that and add England to our best player. We have currently players playing no where near what they're capable of. Kirmond, Scruton and Finn although not the only ones, they're a a pale imitation of themselves these first 2 games.

In Kirmond's case, unfortunately it looks like injuries have caught up with him and he's just not capable physically of performing like he did a couple of years ago. There's no way he can Captain imo when he seems to be struggling so much with his own game, it's no benefit to either side. As for Finn we know what he did at Cas, we knew he wasn't a flash player but for them he did the little things right and guided them around the park. Atm there's non of that on show and the pairing of Finn and Miller look like they've just met each other for the first time before the game.

Some how we've got to find some domination and aggression in the forwards, Simon we'll add a bit of that but we need a lot more and we need to try some new faces, maybe try Annakin, Walker and Molloy and give Hal a crack at SO, it can't hurt and may give the other players a kick up the . Without our forwards setting a platform our backs will continue to look crap. Add to that if we don't find a win or two, players confidence is going to continue to fall and then we'll really be screwed.

When we played Leeds at boxing day, yes it was a friendly but still I actually thought our defense looked pretty good, came up quick as a line and they worked well with each other and hardly missed a tackle. What's happened since then, sloppy tackles, poor reads and a real lack of dominating as a group in the tackles and slowing the PTB down.

I always thought it'd take time to gel as a side, with a fair number of new faces but it's so frustrating when they're making silly mistakes and some players are just not performing.

Not how I saw it. Finn could have easily dived on that ball but instead he just stood by and watched the Cas player pick it up. I thought we could easily have been going in 6 all at half time. Instead we gift them two tries and the game was pretty much gone by the time they'd scored straight after half time.

Right, I thought England and bill tupou went well. How arthritis was ok but his passing from dummy half can be painfully slow at times and if he sped it up he could be a good hooked.

I thought that we did ok in the first half but again made too many mistakes and cas made us pay which was the difference. As for the 2nd half we were awful. Not only was our tackling at time attrotious but we never looked like scoring.

I don't like to bag individual players but I am afraid from what I have seen from him so far he is not good enough. He is just too slow and his kicking and passing game is below standard.

Finally I would just like to say that even though we let in 7 try I thought our left hand side defence was good. Cas didn't get through on that side once so I think we have to credit arundal and bill tupou for that.

If Kirmon, Scruton and other forwards are injured or completely off form then replace them with Molloy, Simon, Yates and Walker for the Hull KR game...

Thought Walton had been playing centre in pre season? Surprised that he was ahead of Molloy or Yates for interchange second row yesterday.

Don't see how we will win at Hull KR tbh. Injuries or not they'll be targeting us as well be targeting them - and our performances there recently have been diabolical. Their halfbacks (even withou Campese) are infinitely superior to ours.

I think looking at all the posts we seem to agree that on paper we look not bad a side and can compete, but at least 4-5 are nowhere near the quality levels of previous years, and that's what's killing us, we all need to be at the races week in week out as we haven't got world class match winners, too many players have gone missing and arnt giving the goods, we can just afford 1-2 at most but anything above that then however we have prepared for the game is out the window,,
I'm giving it another few weeks, before commiting to the doom, however Warrington away in few weeks will be a marker to any improvement as that was a horror show last year,,

Again another baffling decision from a coach that is held in high regard. Walton should be centre or not in the squad. Other options are better at second row i.e. molloy and centre is one of our weakest positions!

I thought we play HKR next week then Warrington away the week after, then the French at home the week after that?

We do.

For me, the most concerning thing is the tackling.

Here is a link to the highlights:

[urlhttp://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/rugby-league/10167673/castleford-40-6-wakefield[/url

If you watch at the one minute mark, this is just plain embarrassing!

It seemed bad enough at the ground yesterday but, watching it like this is just horrifying.

At the video session (which I'm assuming they have but, with this shower, it doesn't pay to assume anything) hopefully there will be some very embarrassed players who feel the need to put things right.

Already at this stage of the season, is fitness rearing it's ugly head? It's hard to generate line speed and maintain structure and discipline when you're blowing like a billy goat.

People (including our coach) are mentioning the penalties. Hand on heart, does anybody really think that was much of a factor? Penalties go for and against all teams but, good teams play what's on the pitch in front of them. If you don't like penalties, be fitter and more disciplined so you don't have to be as reliant on slowing the ruck down as much.

We are falling into the same patterns as last year. Blaming outside factors that we can't influence. Take ownership of your problems, deal with them and move on.

Yes you need luck in this this game. But more often than not, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Was going to read B Smiths post match interview this lunch time, saw it on the wildcats website this AM but appears to have been taken off WHY?.

As sad/hard as it is to say it; you've got it spot on with regards to penalties. I don't think I've heard a post match interview with Smith yet where he hasn't criticised the ref.
I understood it last year as it took some of the pressure of of the players, but continually blaming the ref and the interpretation in the UK just gives the players a cop out and they start to believe they're beaten as soon as a string of penalties go against them. That's how fans think, not coaches and players!
I have to say that, at present, your standard of fitness would concern me too. This could be down to your preseason being conducted exclusively indoors. Heavy pitches require different conditioning and you can see that the players haven't done much on them and are blowing far too early. I'm sure they'll look better on a summer pitch, but can you afford to wait till those pitches come, if they even do?!
I'm sure I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know, but Halfback is a key area for you too and to go into the season with your hopes pinned on Finn & Miller was a massive gamble. It was all the more baffling when Godinet was allowed to leave, but it is what it is and I'm sure that what you have will be enough to stay up. The question is how much longer can you go on like this?

Fitness isn't the issue, it's turning the ball over cheaply and having to tackle on repeat sets.
It's skill and team work that needs to improve.

Can were better than us. We have to accept that.
There were a couple of things that the ref picked up that were questionable but Smith didn't say we lost because of the ref, he simply said there were some decisions he didn't like. Nothing wrong with that. Powell isn't exactly a ray of sunshine in his post match interviews when they have lost.

Smith said it was our discipline and our game management that cost us, and the fact that Cas were better.

Steady good post, especially the last paragraph which I have highlighted.

After what this club went through and more importantly, put its faithful supporters through last season I really expected to see more improvement. I would have thought that the close call in the Million pound game would have given the club a massive incentive to improve and push on. So far it looks like our leaders are just dishing up more of the same and yet again loyal supporters are being asked to like it or lump it.

At half time 18-6 one of my mates said "good half but remember last year"

I actually think the team that turned up at cas last year were far superior on paper.

That come back was influenced by the likes of

Tim Smith
Ali Lauititi (especially)
Danny washbrook
Pita godinet
Paul mchshane

Those were 5 genuinely influential players who are no longer there and frankly haven't been replaced.

The squad looks more balanced this year and deeper, however quantity has been preferred to quality it would appear.

Looking at that team yesterday there were very few match winners, especially now it seems kirmond is a spent force.

The five players I mentioned above created opportunities from nowhere and it's sorely missed.

However, I do think Wakefield just need that first win and belief will creep it's way in.

Looking at the fixtures it must be hard to see that win but it will inevitably come.

Ultimately it's still very much a bottom 4 squad, so realistically the team has 5 months to gel.

Any improvement this year will be a bonus and if that means finishing 3Rd in the middle 8 then who would complain?

Your point is well made Dave.
At the end of the day our squad is a bottom 4 squad. If they over achieve they may get 8.
Cas has a top 4 squad and if they under achieve they may get 5th.

It's not good to hear from a rivalry point of view but they are the hard facts.

Cas isn't the game to be upset about losing. We have better games ahead of us. Hull KR is a much better test of where we are. It was disappointing to lose the game in teh middle 8 against them as we had it won. We will see how we perform this time. Clearly they will spot us as a must win as well, so not going to be easy.

Our key players will need to step up. Half backs especially.