Hull FC need to sort out our soft underbelly - Gareth Ellis

Ahead of yesterday’s game – our first back after five months – we were full of optimism.

We were training well. There was a reason to be buoyant and excited about our performance yet obviously – and evidently – we seem to be in the same place as we were the last time we played against Warrington in March.

There was just a level of softness and that lack of some desire to not be beaten that you need to be a rugby player.

You can’t rely on the Xs and Os, the tactical side of the game. Whether you’re an amateur player that plays on a Saturday afternoon or a professional, you need some sort of toughness and resilience and desire to want to be better than your opposite number or your opposition.

We just don’t seem to have that at the minute and it is just really letting us down. It’s showing us in a really bad light. Obviously, it was our first game back after so long out so you could say it’s down to rustiness or whatever.

If we’d not had the previous history of these blowout scores then you maybe would say that.

But given where we’ve been, particularly this season, there is obviously an issue there and it’s something we need to address.

We can’t do anything about the players we’ve got – that’s what we’ve got. Yet when I go back to the first game of the season and we played against Leeds, we were full of optimism then and really produced a great performance.

In fact, we absolutely blitzed through Rhinos. From that point, even though we’ve had a couple of wins, we’ve never quite reached those heights again.

Yet yesterday morning I thought we were going to be the team who’d put 50 points on someone. But there is obviously something there that is just lingering around the underbelly of the team that, to me, just seems a bit soft. I find it frustrating myself as I wanted to play this year to complement the key players around me and help bring the best out of them.

But I’ve realised – and I hate admitting it – that I am not the player I once was. Sometimes, particularly after a game like yesterday, I find it really frustrating that I just don’t have the impact I used to have, that player with a leading from the front mentality that once others aspired to be or wanted to follow.

That’s what’s difficult for me personally but we’ve currently got bigger issues in how the team’s playing. We will have to see how this next couple of months pan out.

Our head coach Andy Last spoke about it after the game about how the season used to be a marathon not a sprint yet now it is very much a sprint.

The games will come thick and fast and there will be no room for performances like that. If there are, we will get what we deserve.

On the surface, I do see people wanting to get better and see them training, doing their extras and wanting to improve.

But it goes back to what I said before; there’s an underlying characteristic required. Think about when people say you must be stupid to be a rugby league player; there is that bit of madness that makes you want to go into battle with someone.

It epitomises us in that respect as it’s the manner of our losses that is really hard to take.

If you were in the game for 80 minutes with blood, sweat and tears, just losing out after a ding-dong affair, you’d understand.

You don’t win every battle or confrontation but what’s important is you’re trying. It’s how we’re losing, though, that has been really highlighting a softness about us.

I do feel for Lasty as – in his first game in charge – I think he feels he has had the legs whipped from underneath him.

I certainly didn’t see that performance coming; I thought we were in a good place, we were training well and, though you don’t know what everyone else is doing, I’ve been around the game long enough to know what’s a good session and what’s not.

Lasty was excited to see what we could do after witnessing training. For it to then look like we’re no different, it shows we don’t do coaches any favours, another disappointing thing.

Those issues can’t be turned around overnight. They need to be rectified over a long period. Hopefully he’ll start turning the tide and mould a Hull FC team he wants as ultimately we don’t train to train; we train to perform. And we’re not performing.

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