Not saying it was
all his fault, but you surely agree, until December, we were generally playing with ten men? I remember one instance, where he'd ambled out to the wing. Gibson (I think) beat two opposition players, only to find Stockton stood still, directly in front of him, so Gibbo had to go around him too. He was then left with no one to pass to, as Stockton strolled towards the half-way line. If he'd given 100% commitment all season, I am sure we'd have picked up the extra couple of points that we'd need to stay up.
turnbull-9 wrote:We conceded too many goals, Donald Love, Max Melbourne and Liam Gibson were just not good enough. If it wasn't for Connor Ripley then we would have conceded a lot more goals. And would have still gone down.
But, as I pointed out, the defence was a huge improvement over the season before, conceding almost 20% fewer goals. It wasn't a
great defence, but it was a lot better than in the season before.
Sulking-Stockton last season was a clear demonstration of the old cliche;
'
Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard'.[/quote]
I completely agree that hard work is the most important, and yes Stockton performing at 100% all season would have helped, but i was just saying its a team game and Stockton is not the reason we went down.
As for the defence, we may have conceded 20% fewer goals than the season before, but we STILL had the 2nd worse goals against in the league. Which means we were still not good defensively.
Without Ripley it would have been much worse.
Saying that i don't think CB's were awful and neither was Cooney.
With Gibson making errors and Love and Melbourne not being up to standard it was always going to be an issue.
Hopefully they will be more suited to league 2.
As stated the most important thing now with the issues we have, is to focus on the upcoming season make sure we stay up and build from there