When Pearson took over I think he mentioned a 3 year plan to get where he wanted to be. If that's right then we are two years into it. I suggest seeing as how it's his money and his vision we show a little more patience and let him get on with it.
It's been a poor end to the season fr sure but after 40 yrs of following FC that doesn't really come as a shock. We have been in much darker places in the past.
No matter how many on here profess to know who gets what, who thinks what or who's doing what( all of if being pure guesswork) we need to trust in Pearsons' judgement. The man has been a success in all his past ventures. He is his own man I guess.
We need to stop telling everyone just how good we are going to be before we get there. We need to just quieten down a little and see.
If the plan works then we can shout as loud as we like.
We just set ourselves up time and again by jumping the gun.
While we are all upset things have conspired against us in certain aspects throughout the season.
We need to put this behind us and move on together forwards with a little less noise and a lot more intent.
We need to trust in his judgement for now.
I know the muppets with their 'inside contacts' will come on and rip this to bits but its just the thoughts of a committed FC fan after a terrible night for my club.
But one day hopefully not to far away Adam Pearson will realise his dream and we will scream it out

you are having a laugh.

Fans will not hand over money to watch that same crap again and again and again.

Too much dead wood in that team last night, and they are clearly not motivated to perform.

For each of the (rare) good performances there have been two bad ones. That is the coaches fault.

For every coach who turns it around given time there are plenty of mediocre ones who don't.

Time to change, as cannot afford not to.

I will give you a three year plan. Most of the time when a plan comes together like this you see gradual improvement. So lets see what improvement we have made.
Take the Leeds play off game from two years ago as a line in the stand. That was the performance that prompted AP to say never again. That was when if he was wavering AP decided to gt rid of Agar.
Since then we have had almost an entirely new team.
We have blooded some great youngsters. More than Agar under Kaff ever did. That is a positive. Crooks, Lineham, Shaul, Green developing well. But that for me is the end of the positives.
Gentle promised the difference between good and bad would be less. Well this season has seen us beat Wire away and on neutral ground. We have had good runs of victories, some fortuitous (Magic weekend) some excellent.
We got to Wembley with two of the best guttsy performances we have seen for a while. Cats away was good, Wire in the semi was good. But its the dross that glosses over all of that.
We fail to execute the basics. Basics like running, passing and catching. These should be bread and butter stuff to full time pros. I could handle those if we played like Wire, a good expansive entertaining style of rugby, but we don't. We have gone way back to basics, because the personel we have are incapable of anything expansive.
I really could go on.
But....

A three year plan should have us feeling that a few rough spots can be ironed out and we will be close to the real deal in 2014. Can you see that happening. Even when I take away the raw emotion of last night, I can not see anything other than a postion between 10th and 6th next year.
After almost 4 decades of supporting the club, I have seen highs and many many lows, but patience when its costing a fortune to watch and follow the club is something I am running out of. The masterplan in my honest opinion is way off track.

Fans of all clubs of all sports will hand over money, thats what fans do.

OFFICIALLY the best post since RLFANS began!

I agree with Graham Richards too. We constantly see the centre/second row overrun the play because the timing is shocking. Also we pass the ball from side to side so slowly that the defence are already on us. Not only that, the second rowers/centres are just jogging, there is nothing done at pace, so even if they do get the ball the have absolutely no momentum to burst through tackles

Me too, sums it all up for me, by someone who feels the same pain as I do.

Time to be brave, time to change.

Does that mean you are going to KR?

Does anyone seriously expect us to be challenging for a top 4 place next season? I think the three year plan might just need to be extended a bit.

Absolutely spot on!! I've emailed AP this morning, along the same lines. The thing that is the most frustrating for me is that we struggle on the basics, we are not capable of passing a ball, supporting the ball carrier or running at any sort of angle, our play of the ball is the slowest in the competition by far.

Well said, if we can't actually do the SIMPLE things what hope do we have ?

Guys, hope you dont mind me putting my twopenneth in on this but this time last year we had just been spanked by you lot in the play-offs, our terrible season over and not a minute too soon for some of us. We finished 7th, had a squad of players who didnt want to be in the same room together, we'd sacked our coach and appointed an unproven bloke to take over, we had no big name signing to look forward to and there was an air of doom and gloom amongst us giants fans. Fast forward 12 months and we've had the best season this club has witnessed for many, many years and its not over yet and the buzz around at the moment is unbelievable !

I believe Hull FC and Huddersfield are similar clubs from coming into SL together and have both threatened at times, more than any others, to break the mantle of the big clubs, with our challenge cup final apperances, your grand final and now us winning the LLS, 12 months ago we were feeling how a lot of you are feeling right now judging by some of these posts so my message is you never know what next year could bring, you could 'do a giants' and be sitting pretty in 2014.......write this year off, stay positive, come back next year in hope rather than thinking here we go again but more importantly what myself and about 5000 other giants fans did this year - KEEP THE FAITH !!

All the best guys, see you next season.

Nail on head moment. Great post.

thanks giant daz ,

Shouldn't be difficult since it was made up out of whole cloth in the first place.

AFAIK neither Pearson nor anyone else at the club has put a definite timescale on when we should be challenging the top 4.

If its made up or not the bottom line is we have not progressed on the field that matters. That is the KC and all the pitches where the first team play. We can poiunt to junior development but thats still a good few years off yet.
Mr Pearson has budgeted for losses initially. I suspect publicly or not he will have expected to start to see a return on his investment from 2014 onwards.
I personally can not see how that will happen now. Even if he wields the axe and gets rid of the ones who clearly did not deserve to wear the shirt last night, there is nothing out there to tempt in, that will make us progress.
We could always get rid of the coach, but again who do you bring in. I genuinely feel (and very little will sway my opinion here) that last night was player power at its worst. We did not compete for a single minute of that match. Right from the first set we were down and out. That despite tweets from AP saying that the team were well up for it. He was / is being taken for a ride. Thats before we get onto the faithful who were either there or paying good money to watch on TV.
Player power seems to rear its ugly head at our club far too regularly. I strongly believe it is the cancer that Bomber elluded to 10 years ago. Its has never really been cured. If rumours are to be believed then Radders will step up to the plate. The same Radders who has been at the club almost entirely throughout the period in which that cancer has run through the club. Will he be the answer. I doubt it.
What is required now is root and branch clearance. This will also mean going back to the drawing board and preparing for yet more periods of transition. Some of us will see that through as it is what we do. We have after all seen it all before. Sadly though for Mr Pearson, many will not. The glory boys, bandwagoners, call them what you will, will depart. Pass sales will drop off that I have no doubt. Merchandise will also drop off. The corporate income which is why we play on Fridays will drop. The brand is failing and nobody in business wants to be associated with a brand in decline. Thats all revenue that is required to build the club back up. Mr Pearson is not that wealthy. It is for me genuinely worrying. Sadly there are no quick fixes to cure it. First team wise we are right back at 2011 if not further back.

A good post and an excellent analysis of our predicament.

All very depressing

There is only SO much pain one can endure!

Radford, the guy who goes out drinking with the players, is not the guy to turn this around

Indeed.

We've had a better season than last season. Not by much, and the journey certainly didn't improve, but 'on the field' we had the same finishing position in league and playoffs with a cup final thrown in. Granted at that rate of 'improvement' we'll be challenging the top 4 sometime in the next millenium, but there you go.

The point is that the situation is dire enough without making up fake targets to make it seem even worse.


Which is supposedly what Pearson instigated when he took over. I lack confidence that a second attempt would be any more successful unless someone finally gets to the bottom of where the problems lie, because clearly they haven't managed that yet.

Generally I think we do not agree on this season's progress. Wembley was great, I will grant you that. The league though has shown no improvement IMO. Far far too inconsistent to even contemplate a challenge. This despite reaching the dizzy heights of 4th at one point. Our start was shocking and they way we have ended, Sts and then last night rerally do not warrant much more comment. If Catalans had, had a player with even a modicum of intelligence last week, we would have been spared last nights debacle.

I too feel no confidence in another root and branch clear out, but I have even less confidence that we will see any improvement next season at all. That said, as I said earlier the players are not out there. Our only hope is that the younger players rise to the challenge next year and install some pride in the shirt they are so privilaged to wear.

It's not open to agreement or disagreement. Our league and playoff finishes were identical to last season and we went much further in the cup. Therefore, by definition, we had a better season this year. The fact that we managed this almost entirely off the back of an improved defense is why we've been so inconsistent and why it doesn't [ifeel[/i like a better season.

That's debatable. Four fewer league points for a start. Seven points off the top four compared to four in 2012. Our home record went from 10-2-1 to 7-0-6. Last year we had a big play off win followed by a gutsy defeat, this year a workmanlike win and our club record points conceded.

I guess that most fans were realistically hoping for 5th in the league and a cup semi at a minimum, so on the face of it 6th and reaching the Challenge Cup final isn't a disaster but there have been far too many poor performances. At least as many as last season.

Not if you use the measures everyone was using in the closed season to indicate what they'd consider a better season.

I've been clear all along that our performances haven't improved overall (or at least not much on average) but the fact is we've improved in the only measures anyone was quoting.