Dave T
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Posts posted by Dave T
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20 minutes ago, Phil said:
But on so many occasions they’re painfully slow “can we just go back and look at that first angle? Ok now have we got another view?”
When most of us have already seen that it’s a yes or no
The problems come when there is almost universal disagreement with the VR. Now that doesn't mean the VR is wrong, but it does mean that we should have better communication to educate everyone who is wrong as to why the decision has been made.
As you say, they are often very slow, so what has suddenly changed?
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21 minutes ago, Davo5 said:
A big Wigan slant,behave.
You're welcome to your own view. I find Sky a little blunt in their analysis, they struggle to focus on more than one story. That's what I mean really, rather than any particular bias.
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12 minutes ago, Padge said:
Smart coaches build squads that give you resiliance in adversity.
The salary cap means that as you throw the big bucks at a few stars that squad gets thinner and weaker.
Warrington's lack of depth with injuries and suspensions was exposed, Wigan had similar first choice numbers out but coped better. That said Wire were in the game all through despite Wigan's dominance of posession and territory and that should be a concern for Matty Peet, Wigan should have killed that game in the first half. From a Warrington perspective I would say that Powell will be thinking that we coped with a lot of pressure in adversity and we had to lose sometime.
I'm not sure there is much in that (squad makeup). It is rare you will sign a squad with 7 props/middles and have to play with only 2 of them.
I think it's one of those things, although I have made the point that we should have just had young big lads on the bench even if just to do 10minute stints.
Russell did well and gave us some momentum, but I'm not sure changing a winger for a winger was the tactical change we needed last night!
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30 minutes ago, getdownmonkeyman said:
If Warrington have anymore injuries, certainly at prop, they will completely snookered.
It's where Dudson deserves a real kick up the ass. He basically sat himself down for 5 games for no reason whatsoever.
I know the coverage had a big Wigan slant last night, but Wire have pretty much gone top of the league by having a monster pack and no shortage of pace playing off that. That pack wasn't there last night - Philbin, Harrison, Dudson, Bullock, plus Mikaele just left.
We need to bring in big bodies from somewhere for Thursday.
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23 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:
It was something I noticed and was very evident of Josh's playing in his time at Leigh and especially so in the '17 season when Leigh were in SL, and something I have taken special notice of since, it happened at Catalan also in hard fought games, William's put a load of effort into trying to turn the game around last night, not so much with Josh.
Ultimately they are very different. Williams is a fantastic player, and far superior to Drinkwater.
I'm not too concerned about a half being ineffective behind a beaten pack. Drinkwater is nowhere near good enough to cancel that out.
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26 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:
There was also a forth thing, and it happens in most games that is a hard fought contest, Josh Drinkwater goes missing, he has been instrumental with George William's in getting Wire on the front foot this term, but it looked last night that Williams was on his own.
In the two years he was at Leigh he did it, and also at Catalan, it is a part of his make-up the Lad has everything required skill wise, but he doesn't relish the fight.
I think in reality, the halves played off a well beaten pack, with no bench in support. That is different to the rest of the year and was ultimately the difference between the wins and the losses.
I'm not gonna be critical of a halfback when we were pretty much playing in our own half on the back foot.
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8 hours ago, StandOffHalf said:
I agree. He seemed to speed through things. I thought the Wigan try was offside and I felt Minikin never dropped the ball.
Wigan deserved to win though, for sure.
That's how I see it, and that's a huge turnaround, but if those decisions go like that and we win, I think we have got a win that would be pretty odd.
But that's the reason I'm not too disappointed. We were 2nd best by far, yet in reality could still have won against one of the best teams in the comp. Thats not a bad reflection on our efforts.
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1 minute ago, Just Browny said:
Regardless of the wrongs and wrongs of the video ref's decisions, I think it's a very poor development that there is no explanation of the decisions given and the VRs seem to revel now in giving nothing away about their decision making. As an example Thaler is one who has always explained his thinking very clearly as VR.
Agreed. This was rather the point of us mic'ing the VR up.
Now they seem to be going for dramatic effect.
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9 minutes ago, Padge said:
But there were loads of compliants when the on field ref didn't give his opinion and it was handed back when the VR couldn't decide.
I'm not sure that's true really. Refs call was pretty rare, and tbh it was scrapped years ago and they went with benefit of the doubt to the attack.
I genuinely can't think of a single benefit of the current process of the ref giving their view. I think it's the worst tweak to the VR since we launched it.
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1 minute ago, Padge said:
I said I thought it was a try because I didn't think that I saw seperation enough to say he needed to regather it, I have also said I don't have to take into account the onfield refs decision.
The regathering fully has been mentioned in the past, it really has, there was an emphasis on it to explain why just getting back into contact isn't allowed.
In the end it's the decision of the refs that count and that is what I run with.
I believe you. I watch a lot of games with plenty of noise in the house so it was a genuine question about the VR. I've heard the explanation of needing to regather many many times in the NRL but never in the UK. It's always been quite a clear difference between the comps.
I thought the VR was really poor tonight in how rushed he presented it. I have to assume it is a directive, because to almost skirt past offside decisions and groundings without even explaining his rationale is a huge shift from previous.
Similar to you, happy with whatever is decided, I thought Wigan were far better so I don't have a sense of injustice, but I do think there was a potential offside in the Wigan try, and I think 99% of the time Minikin's is a try. But, it is what it is and in reality, I thought Wigan were probably worthy of a 12 point win.
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1 minute ago, Padge said:
You are not keeping up, they changed the in control last season and tightened it. If you have a grip on the ball and lose it mid flight, it is not enough to just put a part of your body back on it, the old interpritation, you have to completely regather the ball.
Is that true? I know the NRL has had that for years, but I dont recall ever hearing a VR say that in their deliberation here (about completely regathering).
But in any case, most people just thought he grounded it. I think you even said it was a try.
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Just now, Damien said:
Credit to Wilkin for managing to say we have to be balanced with a straight face.
I think there is probably a discussion about key decisions tonight, but fair enough Sky do seem to have moved away from the Eddie and Stevo obsession with refs so can't complain.
But it makes me cringe Wilkin being the one to bring this up in such a manner.
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3 minutes ago, Cumbrian Fanatic said:
Think they said it was also a Warrington Superleague record too, beating anything they had at Wildersppol during the Superleague era too
2 minutes ago, Damien said:Wilderspool held no where near that in the SL era so it would be.
Wilderspool hasn't held that many for decades. We're probably talking biggest crowd in Wire for 40 to 50 years or so.
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I do think there are some question marks about Powell's selections on the bench. I know we have lost 4 or 5 forwards, but I think we need to bring in big lads from the Academy instead of a bench with Minikin and Russell.
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2 minutes ago, Davo5 said:
Two weeks running you’ve struggled for possession & field position against top 4 sides & managed to stay in the game,winning one,so plenty of positives.
Aye, that's the positive I'm taking from it.
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1 minute ago, Damien said:
I thought Wigan were much the better team and could have won by more. I'm really pleasantly surprised with how well our pack has gone the last couple of weeks. The forwards looked much too mobile for Warrington's pack tonight.
Wigan basically muscled up in every tackle. 3 ayers in every wrestle and a fast defensive line. Nailed it to be honest.
We were too passive, and it was always gonna be a struggle with that bench. Despite Wigan being far, far better tonight, I was pleased with our efforts to lose two tries to one, particularly with some 50/50's. Happy with the character, despite pretty average execution.
Well done Wigan, looking forward to the rematch, hopefully 20k+ in there.
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I though Wigan were far superior, so I'm pretty happy with the effort considering.
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Well that was.... Interesting.
Well done Wigan.
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26 minutes ago, JonM said:
Any idea what the stadium capacity is now? I think there was a 15008 crowd for Wire v Widnes in 2016, but I'm not sure whether the capacity is still at that level.
I'm sure there was a press release at the start of the year saying it had increased slightly due to the latest safety certificate or something. Maybe 15.4k?
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1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:
There also appeared to be significantly less engagement with host stadium clubs with ticketing and marketing to their membership etc compared with 2013. That seemed foolish and proved to be so.
What then ultimately did for it was hosting the vast majority of games within an hour and a half drive of eachother. That was simply far too many tickets to squeeze out of the same audience.
This is exactly the kind of arrogance I refer to. They almost ignored everything that made 2013 a success (and it can't be ignored that that included cheap pricing, bundle discounts etc.).
We tried to move from bargain basement to premium, without doing anything in between. Increasing the prices and reducing reliance on giveaways was absolutely the right approach. What we delivered was bizarre.
It should be acknowledged too that by going with the more traditional format, there would be fewer compelling games on show. So we had to focus on the event and narrative around it. To an extent, the BBC really helped with the narrative, and we had some really nice stuff around Greece and other nations, but the events themselves very much had a feel of pre-season friendly with poor presentation.
It all felt very half-assed. I think in 2013 people enjoyed the first games they took in, and momentum built from there - I went to plenty early on, and tailed off as I found the events (not the sport) a touch boring.
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26 minutes ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:
Yes, fair point and happy to accept, my comment was over-simplistic. Better to say people have in the past looked to "the heartlands" as some sort of magical panacea, whereas really our issue has always been the organisation's inability to build and deliver an effective sales and marketing strategy. In new markets, and in old ones. The WC proved that.
But I do think it also showed that with internationals you are selling a new product (rather than "local club"), and so there's little advantage in over-saturating one geography just because more people buy the "local club" product there. We had far too many games in close proximity to each other, many of which were a hard sell. In fact I reckon it's easier to sell marginal games in areas where the audience has a less (well informed) cynical view of the product on offer.
Yup - agreed with all of that.
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On that Wire v Wigan crowd. If Rugbyleagueproject is accurate, the previous highest crowd in recent history for this game at Wire is 14028. So hopefully that will be beaten, and it would mean the highest crowd for Warrington v Wigan for many decades.
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3 minutes ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:
It was a great tournament in many ways, with the inclusive structure shining a great light on rugby league's women and disability developments, and yes the impressive management of the last-minute rescheduling. He deserves credit for that. But at the end of the day tournament organiser's primary metric is how many people are engaged enough to attend. Dutton and his team failed miserably on that score by any measure.
Some of that was down to decisions on structure/location (it must have forever killed the myth of the "heartlands" as a generator of audience and commercial growth), and some of it on the terrible pricing and marketing activation plans. Dutton is responsible for all of that, and like Atlantisman I'm certain that has had a huge impact on the sports finances. It certainly had a huge impact on our ability to use the tournament to create new fans of the sport.
Massive opportunity missed.
I'm not sure I agree with the bit on proving the heartlands can't be a generator of audiences and commercial growth. I think what it proved is that it needs to be done well and we don't just have a load of people sitting around waiting for RL to be staged.
I think a lot of the organisation was very arrogant and was a clear case of looking to run before we could walk. I think they looked at good crowds in places like Warrington in 2013, then thought they could double the amount of games, and quadruple the price and it'd go well. There is literally nothing to back that up as an approach! It really was the strategic stuff that was wrong, and this is why I think a lot of it does fall back to Dutton. It was style over substance.
But as we are seeing this year, there is an audience in the heartlands, we just didn't tap into it. I expect that even if we'd have taken some of the games to London, our strategies behind it would have seen those fail too.
we're all RL tragics and will find plenty to enjoy - but in reality, the mens tournament was largely forgettable. Even the real highs were laced with disappointing elements.
I think had we organised it well and the Heartlands hadn't responded, I'd agree with your point, but I think the poor organisation overshadowed every element of it and makes it difficult to form conclusions on that.
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38 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:
Agreed, the mens opening game and the semis were epic, but much of the rest of that tournament didn't quite catch fire. And ticketing miscalculations played a big part in that.
But the women's and wheelchair tournaments were revelations that transformed the prospects of those two parts of the sport and he deserves credit for that.
Perhaps his best achievement was keeping the BBC on board with wall to wall coverage even after the 1 year delay. Once that was done, every thing else positive was possible.
The men's tournament looked far more like the 2000 version than the 2013 or 1995 version. The majority of games were played in front of poor crowds with library-type atmospheres.
But as you say, wheelchair and women versions were great, PDRL very enjoyable, and positives like TV coverage and government funding on legacy projects were great.
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Fri 14th Apr: SL: Warrington Wolves v Wigan Warriors KO 20:00 (Sky)
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
I don't know whether it is accurate, but I saw on Facebook it was claimed that our one forward on the bench, Green, played fewer than 10 minutes. It really does seem like a bit of a gamrplan/selection error from Powell last night to me.
I think he will have learnt a decent amount from that.