17 March 2023 , 17:35
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The drop is looking ominous for Wakefield Trinity.
They need to start scoring points before they start actually winning games. I’ve never known anything like their current record. Ahead of Sunday’s game at Salford, they’ve gone three successive matches without scoring a single point. This is the first time it's happened to a team in Super League and it’s easy to see why people are worried about Wakefield getting relegated.
There’s been years where a team has come up and been hammered most weeks. But nothing like this run of being nilled three times on the bounce and not from a team that’s already established in Super League. That scoreless sequence just puts its own pressures on the club and players. You’ve got the pressure of trying to get a win - Wakefield have lost all four so far - but also the pressure of knowing you’ve not been able to score.
For more than 20 years they have been defying gravity through their performances. They’ve had some really good seasons there in that period, when they were in and around the play-offs. It’s no coincidence they did that when Jason Demetriou was there and now you see him as head coach of South Sydney.
He had a big impact on the squad. They had some high quality players in his era but this looks like the year when they could fall. That’s especially true when you look at the victories Leigh Leopards have already had. I don’t think Wakefield have to win at Salford but they must at least score.
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A side-effect for a team that’s not scored for three games is the opponents they next face will probably have their own goal of making sure they nil them again. They’ll put extra into defence and suddenly there’s a lot of negative momentum into getting nilled that Wakefield must break to start winning.
I can’t see them beating Salford but they do need to start scoring and then some wins will come after that. The worry is they won’t get enough. And if Wakefield do go down, do they ever come back up again? Knowing what’s being proposed by IMG in terms of ranking clubs, you do fear with all their history, will Wakefield ever return. It’s more than on-field performance now and that’s where they have historically struggled.
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