Despite having a large squad and being fairly fortunate with injuries ( compared to some teams) do the players look tired.

Last season our line speed in defence was superb and really allowed us to stop other teams playing, they were putt under pressure and made mistakes. This season we started off really well getting into the faces of our opponents ie against Wire at MM.

Over the last few weeks it seems to me that we are standing back off teams and not moving up as quick as we once did. Against Wigan we moved up two metres stopped and waited for the collission. This allowed Wigan to win the ruck and put them on a roll which we never recovered from. ( we did the same against Catalans the week before.)


We also worked the players hard in the warm up and only came off about two minutes before the game was to start. Players like robbo and Brown were looking tired before the game Kicked off.


Have we overdone the training and are now suffering or is it to do with the coaching. I cannot see how we have gone from such a tight defence to a struggling defence so quickly.

LOD is obviously a loss and Broughs kicking meant the forwards could start further downfield but that should not affect the line speed,

Is it my imagination or are we playing differently

we dont seem to be as quick at moving up as we were, but dont think the players are fatigued, the weather has become warmer so conserving energy could be a factor?
also without brough's kicking turning the opposition round regularly we aren't getting as much time to grab a breather,maybe this could be a factor in the way we are playing at the moment?

Our defencive record is very similar to last season.
We got a hammering from the best team in the league these things happen.
It is almoast exactly 12 months since we conceeded 44 point to Castleford which is far more embarrasing than losing to Wigan but we recovered and will do again this time.

well we were the fittest team last season.... we have a new head conditioner for this season

I hope they aren't suffering from fatigue 'cos I've just seen 'em being flogged around Leeds Road playing fields in the heat of the midday sun.

Danny Brough was also working with Greg Brown - looks to be running OK.

I actually said on Saturday while they were still going through a quite vigourous warm up that i hope it doesnt leave em knackered for the game because they were doing some energy sapping stuff in the warm up.

I thought we were rotating the team, to keep them fresh, and there were some complaining about it, now questions are being asked about fitness after losing to one of the best teams in the league, who just happen to be on form.

nothing to do with the Wigan defeat. We have being struggling defensively for a while particularly our goal line defence

dont think their tired to me just a poor performance on saturday, but we let 40 in at wire last year and 60 at home against them but still managed to come back at beat them in the play offs, which i think we are capable of doing to wigan this year, one defeat doesnt spell the end of the season to me, wigan look to be on fire at the moment, could they be doing a wire of last year and peaking too early.

Wigan had their best team out, we had arguably our best 2 players missing, they are on fire, we've been mis-firing.

Plenty of time to change things in our favour, we're still only 2 points from the top.

I said this about 2 weeks ago but was shouted down about having squad rotation and no one should be tired. If you get flogged 2/3 times a week and have a weight session the day before a game, you will be knackered. It was showing then, and certainly did agianst Wigan. Again they were flogged today in 31 deg heat. I fear we could be about to hit a 3/4 game blip.

Spot on, there is a stark difference between our goal line defence this season (particularly the last month) to last season where we nilled three teams and only conceeded one try against probably another three or four. One of the nillings was against Cas where we defended something like six or seven consecutive sets on our own line without issue. There is quite a difference this season.