Still not fully convinced.
I don't know why people are saying AL inherited a mess, he didn't, he inherited a championship winning side with 3 key players departing who were all replaced with quality. are the departures better than the arrivals debatable, without a doubt Bateman is a loss, but teams loss quality consistently at the end of each season; difference is Lam inherited a team capable of winning the GF.
I don't see how the Edwards situation was of any impact apart from paper talk and the embarrassment the club faced a coaching U turn. I could never cite that alone as a reason for such poor play.
Throughout this season we've been very inconsistent. We were sloppy and losing early on, now we're still sloppy yet finding enough to beat poorer teams. I still think we've only had 1 complete performance over 80 mins this season, even the win v Wire a few weeks back showed a second half were our team made less meters, conceded more pens, had less percentage of the play and were out-scored.
Take the weekend just gone... that wasn't a strong performance at all. Was penalty filled opening in a back and forth game without either team looking impressive. Some good some great individual moments (Marshall for example) but hardly a great team performance.
But... we are winning. We're second in the table. We're looking stronger in D and we still have key players missing. We're in a very good position to really make a good run at the GF, and hopefully really make a mark and defend our title with real fight.
6 out of 10 so far for the season over all.
I also will say this, for those out there who regularly watch the NRL will understand how poor the standards in SL have gotten. I don't think it's Saints who are a particularly outstanding RL team, I think the overall standard of RL is very low.
NRL looks way faster, the players look fitter, run harder, ball movement is slick and precise, over here there's a lot of players who simply aren't good enough.
