When people complained about our boring style against Swinton, a lot of people defended the tactics saying it will be the right thing to do in SL. I said if we try + play nothing but 5 drives and a kick in SL we probably won't win a single game. Obviously there are times, a lot of times in fact, when a teams just needs to play out a set with drives but not every set, not all over the pitch. Until the team can show they can play a bit, Betts will quite rightly take flack. The performance yesterday wasn't down to us being a new team, IMO it was purely down to the style of play. Woeful defensive shape, no clue in attack. Betts is clearly out of his depth and tbh I didn't see anything yesterday that I didn't see last year. I thought we may have won yesterday, purely on adrenaline and being up for the 1st game - not to forget the standard of opposition. The way Wakefield opened us up however, plus the poor discipline, was just a repeat of any game last year - only this year we've not got Danny Hulme to provide a bit of spark in attack.
Leeds started poor last year because they were too expansive + there were too many dropped balls. Some people said they would have to change, others said that if they carried on + clicked they would be brilliant. I don't see how we are going to get better in attack over the next few weeks, because you could hardly say we were too expansive and there were a lot of dropped balls near the line or misread plays etc. We had a choice of either a drive to the line or Hanbury doing his best Thackeray impression of a show and go to the line. There was a set in the 1st half were Wakefield knocked-on on their own line only about 5 yards out, in front of the north stand. The team proceeded to have 5 drives, moving no more than about 5 yards left or right. The only time the ball moved from that corner was a cross field kick on the last play. The other 9 players were spread accross the pitch, some stood very deep about 20-30 yards behind play waiting to run on to the ball, but the ball just never came.
Flap, Flap, Flap.
I think there is a hell of a lot of flapping around there V4E for a first game analysis although it wasnt a surprise to see you as the author of that post.
Things arent perfect but in general I thought they did okay for a first run out. Probably a far higher number of players stepping up for the first time at SL level (or returning to that level after a long time outside the top flight) than I initially thought we would run with in our first game. I was away for the game so very surprised to see the lineup having had no buildup to the game. From that perspective I thought we did alright and I didnt think anybody was particularly below standard.
Regardless of whether Betts is the best man for the job we took a massive hit in the run up to the game on some key and experienced players and then after re-jigging for this game to lose another in Clarke was a big hit.
Defensively at times we where very good and at other times very very naive. It is going to be like this for the rest of the year I think. Very up and down and trying to settle the squad down. We will have some big wins this year but I think we will have equally as many blow ups and post some big scores against us.
We need games more than anything and a chance to settle some combinations down when players come back. You could see the difference that a slightly more settled halfback combo for Wakefield had when they started to win more field position.
Trust in Widnes
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