Wolf whistle (From Warrington Guardian)

Wolf whistle

11:30am Saturday 6th February 2010

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CAN I just remind everyone of the last time Harlequins played at The Halliwell Jones Stadium.

It was the final game of last season and the ‘Wire’ players paraded the Challenge Cup after the final hooter sounded.

Head honcho Tony Smith got on to the microphone in front of 10,000 or so fans and said something to the effect of: “We’ve won one trophy, next year we’re going for both!”

Good for him and good for the club.

If you’re going to play this great game of ours at the highest level, then you should aim for the stars.

I’ve no doubt some of the players thanked him, though, for heaping the expectancy on the squad.

That probably would have been there anyway after winning the cup last year and improving the strength of the squad with the signings of Richie Myler, Ryan Atkins and David Solomona.

I noticed Andrew Johns gave a rallying call to the fans in last week’s Warrington Guardian - I’m going to give one of my own.

Don’t heap the expectancy on the new guys. Do the team a favour and lay off them.

Myler, Atkins and Solomona – as good as they are – might not settle in straight away.

Sometimes it takes time to gel and it won’t help their cause or the cause of the team if we - the speccies – get on their backs.

A similar thing happened when ‘Wire’ fetched Matt King, Michael Monaghan and Chris Hicks all the way from Australia.

Not everything went well at first and some of the bagging they received from the terraces was disgusting – no matter how much we might feel that we can shout anything we like because we’ve paid to get in.

How things have changed! Everyone can see now how poorer the team would be without those three guys around the place.

I’ve already heard some moaning about the display against Wigan last week not being inspiring.

Wake up and smell the coffee – it was a friendly, Smith was trying loads of things out, shuffling the team around, new structures and new plays.

It never was going to be a classic, that wasn’t the point of the exercise.

We need to give this team a chance of showing us what it is capable of and it is possible that the true picture may not appear until the grounds get firmer later in the year.

Very often we hear about it being a marathon rather than a sprint and never a truer word has been said.

The time for judgement will be after looking at the final table in September.

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