Re: Defence : Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:28 pm  

the first try they scored, looked like broughton was well inside, bearing in mind that,to me we had a 3 on 3 in defence, why was broughton more or less on wardle's shoulder allowing them a walk in try with no one near luke george?

i have said in another thread we just don't hit the opposition hard enough, we don't win collisions,we don't put teams on the back foot.

i think they had 4 stroll in tries today as well as broughton getting beaten in the air again by george.

Re: Defence : Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:33 pm  

The try at the end I excuse. Grubbed kicks are very hard to defend as the ball can bounce anywhere.

Re: Defence : Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:18 pm  

What I have noticed it there is no camaraderie. No one in all in they dont look like a team. I watched Catalans against Wakey and Widnes against Wire and every big hit or when they tackled a player into touch there was big back slaps all round same as if they had scored a try, I dont see that from the Giants.

Its same as when Broughy got took out other week vs Salford, where were all his mates flying in to dish out a bit of justice, conspicuous by their absence. Not sure whats going on behind the scenes and may be reading it wrongly but we dont look like a team atm

Re: Defence : Mon Jul 21, 2014 6:51 am  

According to the stats we missed just 9 tackles yesterday. A massive improvement but still we conceded 26 points.
Ukuma taai made 32 tackles without a miss and an average gain of 7.59 metres per carry-a great stint from him. Patrick only carried the ball three times!!

Re: Defence : Mon Jul 21, 2014 8:20 am  

I thought we were a lot better in the second half. 2 tries conceded one within a minute of the re-start and 1 when we already had the game won.

The same problems were there, though. I sure all but one if not all their tries were due to our errors. Connor & Ta'ai both dropped the ball at least 3 times each, stupid off loads tried, and we still seem to be losing 80% of collisions. Improvement, yes, but a long way to go.

Re: Defence : Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:03 pm  

jools wrote:

According to the stats we missed just 9 tackles yesterday. A massive improvement but still we conceded 26 points.
Ukuma taai made 32 tackles without a miss and an average gain of 7.59 metres per carry-a great stint from him. Patrick only carried the ball three times!!

also im sure patrick gave a pen away and got the ball thrown in his face and just looked at who did it and turned around, where is the mongrel?! i know hes not that type of player but we cant just let teams keep taking the pee out of us.

Re: Defence : Mon Jul 21, 2014 6:13 pm  

When we train we get Brough kicking to the corner but there is never anyone there challenging our boys for the high balls. We should be getting them to practise challenging for high balls. If we practise an attacking kick to the LHS then our we should have some "defenders" there to make it more realistic.

We make the same mistakes every week. That's a coaching issue IMO as well as motivation, application, effort, mongrel. If we don't find some form and some beans from somewhere now then we will be humiliated in the play offs. They have it in them because they'd managed to play consistently better last season and the squad is basically the same. They need to be honest with each other, have out whatever it is that's going tits up and get it sorted and done with.

Re: Defence : Mon Jul 21, 2014 7:12 pm  

We've already conceded more points this year than the entire of last season, 510 compared to 507 last.

We're conceding an average of 24 points per game which if that carries on we will have an end of season tally of 655 points against !!

Re: Defence : Tue Jul 22, 2014 10:32 am  

Danril wrote:

When we train we get Brough kicking to the corner but there is never anyone there challenging our boys for the high balls. We should be getting them to practise challenging for high balls. If we practise an attacking kick to the LHS then our we should have some "defenders" there to make it more realistic.

We make the same mistakes every week. That's a coaching issue IMO as well as motivation, application, effort, mongrel. If we don't find some form and some beans from somewhere now then we will be humiliated in the play offs. They have it in them because they'd managed to play consistently better last season and the squad is basically the same. They need to be honest with each other, have out whatever it is that's going tits up and get it sorted and done with.

Agree with your last paragraph.

All our problem are for PA to sort. They haven’t been sorted in the last 20 games (first game excepted) so I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll all be sorted in the next 6. If they aren’t sorted immediately we’ll end up where we are now and I can’t see us making any progress from 6th when, with basically the same players we couldn’t do anything form 1st last year.

Momentum is built, not switch on and off like a tap and we are fast running out of games to build it.

The only theory I can put forward is that we are sub-consciously trying to lull to rest of Super League into a false sense of security and we are suddenly going to burst into life in the play-offs.

Winning more collision, faster play the balls and ruck speed, faster line speed, stopping offloads, less unforced mistakes, less penalties, better defence out wide (on the ground and in the air), playing for 80 mins, being composed near the oppositions try line, having some mongrel , building pressure (did Bradford actually have to drop out from under their own posts?) – there’s a lot to fix in 6 games.

I’ve stopped reading the Examiner ‘cos I know exactly what I’ll be reading – the same old of the last few months.

Time to stop the talk and walk the walk. Here’s hoping.

Re: Defence : Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:19 am  

TBC wrote:

Agree with your last paragraph.

All our problem are for PA to sort....


– there’s a lot to fix in 6 games.

I wonder if the problem is an attitude one? Every week, even during the recent winning streak, we've had PA (and the fans and players) being really down on themselves and complaining about the performances.

This year we win a game narrowly and it's all "That's not the performance we were looking for, we were disappointing, we need to work harder and smarter". Last year we won a game narrowly and it was "We won, we did what we needed to do, got the win, next week we move on and play again". A big difference in style.

There was much talk last year of the players "writing their own story" and almost every match they looked like they were having a cracking time just playing the game. This year, the same coach and players, and it's like they're pulling teeth, like they've decided their story this year is going to be a dull miserable one and they're hating every moment.

It's supposed to be fun FFS! If I wanted misery I'd watch the news or listen to my work colleagues droning on.


I think it's fixable very quickly. Very quickly indeed. Get the lads to remember how much they enjoy playing rugby. That'll sort 90% of it.