Catalans

What Watson isn’t doing is telling them to give daft penalties away, drop the bell, fail to play the ball properly, kick so poorly and so on
Before anyone looks at Watson the players need to have a long hard look at themselves

A few thoughts

Today was absolutely not good enough. We obviously have been nowhere near good enough for weeks

At the start of the season our forwards were winning their battle most games but our backs, half backs in particular (including Lui), were letting us down. That meant we either won or lost narrowly

Today and last few games we’ve lost the forward battle. We’ve stopped making many metres forward and we’re ‘losing the collision’ in defence so the other team is comfortably making 8-15 metres on every drive and playing the ball before our defenders are back on their feet and we concede penalties for offside and holding down. This is the most worrying thing as it is the strongest part of our squad

Coaches depend on results and we’re not getting them so clearly Watson is at risk. But I honestly don’t think the team are playing to his instructions. He’s said himself today and after other games. The tactics can be seen in the attacking shapes when we are on top. Those are not positions that players adopt without being coached and working on it in training. However once we go behind we revert to one up rugby really quickly. That is what players do without being coached. They get nervous about mistakes, wanting to show they are doing their bit, hesitate instead of pushing up and supporting, that kind of thing. Also when you make as many errors as we did against Leigh for instance you can’t get into position to get the attacking moves going so you never get out of the one man drives

I suspect Watson has looked at the skills we’ve got and told his players that when the other team are on top to simplify our game and play territorial rugby - get up the field, kick long/dead and keep them down there, try and force an error. All teams do that at times, some more than others. Unfortunately our players are not defending well enough to force errors or keep teams in their own half. So we keep having to attack from deep ourselves which brings more pressure and repeats of what I said above


I do think that Watson needs to look at his player fitness and their attitude to going behind. That’s part of his job to make sure they are up for the fight and at the moment they don’t look it. They remind me of how they were after the points deduction a couple pile of years ago - like ‘why should we bother, the world is against us’. We know that ended up in being seconds from going down. So Watson and the senior players need to pull themselves out of that as soon as possible


What Watson isn’t doing is telling them to give daft penalties away, drop the bell, fail to play the ball properly, kick so poorly and so on
Before anyone looks at Watson the players need to have a long hard look at themselves

Under Watson we have tailed of significantly in most seasons.If we do that this time we are doomed.While I accept that there have been issues at the club during all his seasons they are not the only causes.
If you look at last season we had probably the best squad we have had for years and yet by the end of the season we were a shadow of earlier in the year.The worrying thing is we are now losing against teams we should and have to beat.I think at least some if not all the blame for recruitment and squad balance lies at the coaches door.We now have 7 wins in the last 22 games or thereabouts.It has to be said that there are very few coaches who stay at a club for a very long period without losing their mojo and frankly I think we are there now.As for replacements but maybe promote Gleeson?Possibly an old coach with a point to prove or a young one with ambition.We need an Allardyce of R L.