Hi everyone,
Thanks again for all your replies!
Tvoc – Again, the stats don’t tell the story. Of the 10 rankings you give, 5 of those were outside the play-off places, so not as good as you would have me believe. McDermott’s first season was in 2006 (albeit not a full season), but the Club began to undergo major changes from as soon as 2007 with Ian Lenagan retaining his London shares and yet becoming owner of Wigan. This would suggest to me that Mac did not perhaps have the backing to build the team that he would have liked as no financial investment was made. Several of their key players, such as Henry Paul, were allowed to leave the Club and were never replaced, and then in addition to this they had a number of injuries to key players such as Henry Fa’afilli. With all the success we’ve had over the last 8 years, I am confident that the Club will continue to invest in our team, so the coming years do not concern me at all.
In terms of the 2011 fixtures against Warrington, Wigan and Saints that you quote, I have to admit disappointment in you. The results against Warrington at home and Saints away certainly add some drama to your statistics but we played really well against Wigan at home, losing only in the dying minutes, and we should have beaten them away when Danny McGuire scored (Stuart Cummings publicly admitted that this try should have been awarded). We were also very competitive in the Saints game at home for about 60 minutes, but again a disappointing last 20 lost it for us. We may have lost to Warrington twice in the League, but our performance in the play-offs was outstanding; we won when it mattered. I’m going to repeat myself here tvoc – the stats do not tell the story.
Nantwichexile – I’d be interested to know how many of Webb’s penalties have actually been for dissent, do you know? I thought most were through “sloppy technical offences”.
DHM - Again, thanks for the patronising definition of aggressive. Liam Hood may be 20, but that doesn’t mean he’s physically ready (to be honest, I find that logic a bit strange). You don’t hit an age and suddenly magically become physically ready to deal with older, more experienced players who are ready to batter you – it takes practise and experience which he won’t have had in the under-20s. I also mention above that you have to be mentally able to cope with the change and again, this isn’t something which magically happens overnight, it takes time and experience and I fully believe that with the promise he shows, we SHOULD give him that time. When I talk about bringing players in from the under-20s I talk about phasing them in and for all your patronising, you haven’t been able to tell me why I should change my mind on this.
Finally, some of you have talked about the fans forking out to watch sub-par rugby and whether or not we should cheer the team on. I’m going to reiterate my point that this Club has given us some fantastic memories over the last few years, and frankly I’ll be running off that for a long time to come. I know it’s disappointing to see what we’re seeing at the moment, but who wants to be the one to say “yeah, I didn’t go to the games in the back half of the season after we lost to Wigan and Warrington, but I went to the Cup Final and Old Trafford”. For me personally, I want the right to say at the Final that I WAS there for those games (I'm no early '00s Bulls fan!!) We are SUPPORTERS and we should do just that – SUPPORT. 10 years ago the fans turned up win or lose and I would like to think that most of us will do that now (as I know most of you will).
