Ok, I've slept on it, and I think I'm now in a better place to address yesterday with less emotion and more reason.
I think one of the big issues we have actually identifying what the actual problem is. The fact that we can't pin it down is extremely unsettling and tends to lead fans - those of us who actually have no hard knowledge and have to guess based on the public snippets we see - to make sweeping assumptions and ridiculous knee-jerk reactions.
Add to this the tendency to react emotionally to the most recent thing and you end up with highly negative, short term "solutions", such as the "Young Out" thread over at DW.
I think if we look at the season as a whole we can draw a few firm conclusions.
1) We're struggling with injuries - I'm not going to talk about this, it's clear to anyone who wants to look that we have a lot of players out, and many of them are the most influential ones. It's been done to death.
2) New Players take some time to bed in. We know Lima and Shields are top class operators, yet they are struggling. Partly that is adjusting to a new style of game, and partly it is not actually having a stable squad to bed down into. This will improve I have no doubt. Again this has been talked about a lot.
3) Key internationals going missing during games. Last season WLR and Daly were massively influential, this sason they have struggled to make their mark. Obviously 1&2 have an effect, but I also believe that players react to international duty in one of two ways. Some it buoys up, it invigorates them and they come back even better, more enthusuiastic, and in the best form of their life. Some find the step down in intensity disheartening and seem to lose the ability to play at the level they obviously can. This should rectify itself with time, and we can see WLR improving game on game. Yes he's far from the world class full back he was last season, but he's clearly got some class.
4) Our coaching set-up has massively changed, and not for the better. Again it's been done to the death, but we shouldn't ignore the impact it will be having.
The only other thing we can justifiably say is that despite the hysteria over at DW it isn't the same few players consistently failing.
Two games ago Booj was held up as a wonderful example of a player coming up from the Championship and successfully making the step up in intensity and skill. Now he is considered to be an abject failure and a clear sign Dai knows nothing about recruitment.
Three games ago Lima was obviously the source of all our problems and Searle was the only possible solution. Now Searle is spawn of Satan who can't even pick up a rugby ball without giving points away. I could go on, but I think the only thing we can say is that players are not consistently bad, or consistently good. Very few of them are firing constantly, or failing constantly. All this means is that there isn't an obvious problem we can fix by dropping someone and replacing them, even if we had the depth of squad.
I genuinely think that this is a perfect storm of problems. None of the issues in isolation would be a big deal, but put them all together and it is impossible to work around. I firmly believe it will come good in time. We have no God given right to make the play offs, but I honestly think we have too much class to start worrying about relegation just yet. We're three points off the play offs, and 9 points off relegation. That shows how tight it is, and how little work we actually have to do to turn it around.
The one thing that worries me more than anything else - and I accept that this is simply an arbitrary judgement based off the footage the TV bosses decided to show us - but out bench looked like they were having a great day out. Quins looked concerned and focussed on what was going on on the pitch. When the camera panned across our remaining subs in the second half half it looked like they were having a lovely time.
I don't really understand why it is they weren't even a little bit concerned. And that says more about the squad attitude to me than anything else. If they aren't taking the current stream of failure seriously then how can we expect them to do anything about it. The only person who looks like they know they are failing and hates every second of it is Lima.
Before I finish I'd like to say a word in defence of Myall. Not too long ago Myall and Gaskell were our second row for a good chunk of the season and they did brilliantly well. Then MYall got relegated to second or even third choice. He is probably the most rounded 2nd trow we have, he isn't quite as good in the lineout as Gaskell, and he isn't quite as good in the breakdown as Launch, but he's a worthy second to both of them. The slating he is getting is preposterous.
So I may be being delusional, but I genuinely believe we are very close to clicking, and that we will soon. We'll scrape a lucky win, and it will give us just the morale boost we need to start to play a little better. In the long term I think the only changes we need to make are to the coaching set-up. We need one or two new faces in, and we need at least one of them to be someone a bit special.
Topic: An attempt at objectivity (Read 2637 times)
Always a Wasp