Sal Paradise wrote:
The point of mentioning the Magic game is that it was week 13 so half way and it was when things started to go down hill - Wigan's depleted team simply beat the crap and the confidence out of them. They were never the same team again after that.
The point about the second half of the season is that is the most up to date evidence we have of how the team is going. Since the Magic weekend they had wins against: Catalans (very lucky), Hull, Widnes, Hull KR and Salford hardly confidence boosting stuff. Catalans apart they didn't beat a top side since the Magic weekend.
The CC is an excuse in my opinion, the beat Saints late April so between May and August they played 1 game in the CC which was against a non SL side. So as a distraction it should not have been even a consideration for an elite professional player.
We still have the conundrum of why they played so badly when it really mattered against the Catalans? 2006 the team was sick of Smith and didn't want to play for him. Early 2007 was equally bad it was only after Smith announced his departure that things started to improve.
I am struggling to see why many on here think the top 4 is a mere formality - it is difficult to argue that the team is ageing and in decline other teams have strengthened and - in some cases - have better youth structures in place.
The point of mentioning the Magic game was that along with the Saints game you mentioned was that they were the only losses in the first half of the year, conveniently the only two matches you remember from that period.
You mention as has some others about how Wigan beat the cr@p out of us at Magic and others have said it showed teams how to beat us. Well Leeds being "soft" in the forwards and Wigan playing "tough" is hardly new information that people only realised at the Magic weekend. Why couldn't Wigan beat us at Headingley a few weeks earlier if it's that simple using that ploy? People can't honestly argue that Wigan only just stumbled across and tried this tactic against for the first time at the Etihad. Why didn't Warrington or Cas take advantage of this in the Cup? Why did Saints scrape past us with 12 men if we are so easy to batter?
Actually the first 'warning signs' came a week before Magic at Castleford. Yeah we picked up the win against a Cas team on a short turnaround but we started to show signs of dropping off.
It also seems important to point out (even though some will hate this as they don't like "excuses") but the time we dropped off also coincided with losing both starting hookers. Shortly after Hardaker and Ablett would pick up various bans (the former proving quite costly IMO in the home loss to Hudds where BJB had a 'mare against Brough). Sinfield missed a few with a back injury, Leuluai missed some too as did a couple more guys.
When we played Saints in the cup we had Hardaker, Sinfield, McGuire and Burrow all playing......those four wouldn't all feature again together until HKR at home. Rusty on that game but when Burrow came on then we slowly worked some good play in the final quarter. The week after home vs Cas......probably our best showing in the second half of the season (with all those players available) and one we should've won until Sinfield's brainfart. We then take all those key guys out again for the shambles vs Bradford and London but see what we're capable of in the cup games with those guys in. We then had no McGuire or Burrow for the Saints and Wigan losses. We then lost to Catalans in the playoffs.....granted like I've mentioned, we simply weren't good enough on the day (yet Briscoe catches the ball and we're through for how poor we were) it can happen in sport. Whilst some are loathe to even hear the words "Challenge Cup" and to them as individuals it was a distant memory it's foolish to not recognise that teams in many sports fail to lift again after a cup win......professional players they may be but rising again to the standard required in a few weeks after getting the one prize they probably wanted most isn't as straight forward as some would like to make it seem for the sake of their argument.
When reviewing the season, if you're going to just focus on the losses then you might want to look at the line-ups and see how many key starters and how many of the spine in particular were missing in those games.