I reckon the pasting of KF and Sloan in particular is a tad harsh. Their errors might be highly visible but as other posters have pointed out, it's the performance of the forwards in both attack and especially in defence.
I've been watching KF more closely the last few weeks and he does seem to have a decent long kick in him - just that he's inconsistent and more prone to a miss-hit than many others. When he gets it right it goes ok but he's just not as sweet a striker as the premier kickers.
Regardless, he's often kicking from his own 40 and unfortunately, the opposition is often kicking from our 40 too. So his kicks are defensive and find a well-set winger or FB who proceeds to rack up the kick return metres. Meanwhile opposition kicks are attacking and it's pretty hard to notch decent kick return metres when defusing a bomb on your own 5 metre line.
So KF cops crap for some dud fifth tackle plays (justified) and Sloan for dropping some bombs (also justified). But until we have a pack that can cut it with the better teams, these fellas are on a hiding to nothing.
Two further points: KF may not be an elite half but our last one wasn't either. And at least Kyle's half the price. I also suspect (only by observation - no intel whatsoever) that Sloan may be busted. He's not chasing through the middle like he was six weeks ago. Might be on instruction (doubtful), a lack of confidence (possible), a lack of care (very unlikely) or an undisclosed injury.
None of this is to say that as a club we shouldn't be aiming to do better at half and wing. But until the real problem is solved, you could slot in a 1 - 7 of immortals and they'd still get rolled (just possibly by not as much).
