I don’t agree that the lack of pre-season friendlies is the issue. The games against West Wales and Whitehaven were virtually pre-season games in themselves the way they went. I will admit to being surprised when SF said he didn’t have any issues with the players fitness. But then he is far more qualified than me to make that judgement. With our strongest 17, I thought we could compete for third place. Losing Tomkins out of that 17 was a huge blow, and then to have Cook and Jewitt barely available to has compounded that. There’s no short-term fix in my opinion. You sack the coach, the new one loses his first six games, what then? Sack him as well?
The thing is James, we knew before the season started the situation with Logan Tomkins, yet we never addressed it. That is simply inexcusable. The injury to Cook was a big blow, but Jewitt's injury record is woeful, so we knew what to expect with him (injury-wise). The squad is paper thin, we all know that, but the lack of fitness and effort shown this year is appalling and listening to SF's pre and post match interviews, it sounds as if he is expecting another hiding. Its typical Widnes, do things on the cheap and hope we can see it through.
I agree that the lack of friendlies was not an issue as we knew we were in the early rounds of the cup which would act as friendlies. I would imagine that the club didn't issue fitness programmes for the players as it would have been against the Furlough rules, but surely some of them should have had a bit of professional pride in themselves and kept themselves fit. All of those players played amateur rugby at some stage in their lives and know what its like to train twice a week so if your back to part time you know (or should know) that you do your fitness in your own time.
I looked at the squad over the summer as it was being built and looked at other clubs squads, I couldn't see why people were thinking that we would be challenging when looking at the other teams. This squad is weaker than the 2019 side which was fulltime that year. I remember people moaned at the quality of rugby we played when we were fulltime and we were far from the best team in the championship that year. Look at some of the players in that squad, players that people didn't rate, but they have been replaced by players of less quality. Did anyone really expect Cook and Jewiit to play 15-20 games this years as I didn't, at least the chuckle Twins put the shirts on. Going into the season without a hooker is very poor and you cannot blame SF for that, that's the clubs fault.
For me the squad was never good enough or deep enough, that's not the players fault or SF's. Its not SF's fault they gave him the job as head coach after he presented them with a paper thin CV. The club are paying some decent wages but the money was spent in the wrong places and that is shown by the poor performances on the pitch. In my opinion the blame is with the club for keeping the CEO in a job, the CEO for making a bad judgements on the coach and player recruitment, then the coach and lastly the players, its not totally their fault if they are let down by players in key positions and a coach that isn't quite doing it, but fitness is down to them. In my time playing the game people don't go the pitch with a 'can't be arsed' attitude or without self pride, especially when you have some big prop trying to run over the top of you! Give the players a little break please, especially the young ones.
With our strongest 17, I thought we could compete for third place. Losing Tomkins out of that 17 was a huge blow, and then to have Cook and Jewitt barely available to has compounded that.
There’s no short-term fix in my opinion. You sack the coach, the new one loses his first six games, what then? Sack him as well?
I agree that the lack of friendlies was not an issue as we knew we were in the early rounds of the cup which would act as friendlies. I would imagine that the club didn’t issue fitness programmes for the players as it would have been against the Furlough rules, but surely some of them should have had a bit of professional pride in themselves and kept themselves fit. All of those players played amateur rugby at some stage in their lives and know what its like to train twice a week so if your back to part time you know (or should know) that you do your fitness in your own time. I looked at the squad over the summer as it was being built and looked at other clubs squads, I couldn’t see why people were thinking that we would be challenging when looking at the other teams. This squad is weaker than the 2019 side which was fulltime that year. I remember people moaned at the quality of rugby we played when we were fulltime and we were far from the best team in the championship that year. Look at some of the players in that squad, players that people didn’t rate, but they have been replaced by players of less quality. Did anyone really expect Cook and Jewiit to play 15-20 games this years as I didn’t, at least the chuckle Twins put the shirts on. Going into the season without a hooker is very poor and you cannot blame SF for that, that’s the clubs fault. For me the squad was never good enough or deep enough, that’s not the players fault or SF’s. Its not SF’s fault they gave him the job as head coach after he presented them with a paper thin CV. The club are paying some decent wages but the money was spent in the wrong places and that is shown by the poor performances on the pitch. In my opinion the blame is with the club for keeping the CEO in a job, the CEO for making a bad judgements on the coach and player recruitment, then the coach and lastly the players, its not totally their fault if they are let down by players in key positions and a coach that isn’t quite doing it, but fitness is down to them. In my time playing the game people don’t go the pitch with a ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude or without self pride, especially when you have some big prop trying to run over the top of you! Give the players a little break please, especially the young ones. With our strongest 17, I thought we could compete for third place. Losing Tomkins out of that 17 was a huge blow, and then to have Cook and Jewitt barely available to has compounded that. There’s no short-term fix in my opinion. You sack the coach, the new one loses his first six games, what then? Sack him as well?
Agree with that.
On a separate note a Widnes and Everton fan ? You’ve chosen a hard life 😉😉