Derby defeat puts out any burning embers of hope about Hull FC reaching The Play-Off’s!
……Hull Daily Mail 28-10-18.
I rarely pinch much from the local paper but that headline on Saturday morning said it all, but even that was much too late, as it just quantified everything most FC fans have been saying for the last three weeks. We can now apparently officially forget about having anything much to play for and are now resigned to cruising to the end of the season with the vagaries of this ridiculous league structure ensuring that not only the FC, but Catalans, Wakey, and Huddersfield have all got little to play for but their pride.
The Dobbins were victorious, the bragging right are theirs and have I got it in the neck from the East Hull ‘inteligencia’ ever since! But boy I was upset because Derby defeats are hard to take, particularly when we never really looked like winning. Even when we drew level we somehow knew that we would struggle to finish them off and yet all our Coach could say much about straight after the game was how pleased he was with our defence!
OK our intensity and application in that department was good even in the first half when all the luck went the Robins way, but once again our attack was woeful!! This isn’t football where you can boringly hang on for a draw, in Rugby League you can’t win games if you can’t keep hold of the ball, complete your sets in a structured way and get the processes right at the end of them. The fact is in our game you have to score more tries than the opposition.
We had the Dobbins on the rack at 16-16 but couldn’t finish them off and as I have said a few times of late, for me our inability to build pressure, turn the screw and get over the line from positions in the oppositions 20 is an on-going and worrying trend.
Should we be concerned? Well consider for a minute last season at this time. We had finished third in the league on 27 points, 3 points behind the second placed team Leeds and we were looking forward to a semi-final date next weekend with the Rhino’s at Doncaster to attempt to get back to Wembley again.
We could hardly be in a more contrasting situation this time around could we? And as our 2018 season stutters to its close perhaps it’s time to consider whether we have improved since then? Do we, looking back on the 2018 campaign, still feel that the future is bright? Can the injuries we have sustained in such great numbers, be the only reason we are where we are now? Have we replaced Ellis and Watts who took us so far last year? And finally, despite every one of our starting 17 having been injured some time or other during the campaign, for us disappointed FC fans is it all getting just a tad worrying?
As a fan of 60 years I’ve paid my money and done my time and like everyone reading this I’ve every right to big my Club up and celebrate when they are good and by the same measure when we are rubbish I have every right to complain and grumble about them and so having said that please now read on …..