Poor game in poor conditions, played by two poor teams. Not a great advert for the Championship.
In my view, our failing seems to be more about a lack of aggression in our forwards rather than size. Was their pack that much bigger than our pack? Their forwards seemed to run the ball and tackle with more aggression. We reverted to our usual failing of half hearted drives and players too easily tackled. And we do not seem to be able to defend the line.
I was optimistic coming into the season and despite the London and Dewsbury results, we can still turn it around and get a top five finish.
I welcome the addition of the Warrington players and would have played Patton before Lyons. We need to have forwards on the bench - there is no point in playing Lyons on the bench, unless we have no decent forwards available. I wouldn't mind having Latu back if he is available.
We need to finish in the top five and a chance of promotion this season. If not, any decent young players such as Dugdale, will be picked up by other clubs; Smith and Tomkins may not want another year in the Championship; and the likes of Owens, Craven and possibly others may find better deals elsewhere.
I’d say the Dewsbury pack was bigger but still more significant was the size of their bench compared to ours. Jay Chapelhow (coming back from injury) aside we had no big forwards to bring on. I think this was a major factor in us struggling to make headway.
Surprised at the Our League comments, my feed was faultless! .....
As was mine - and I'm a techno-user-idiot.
The London game was more worrying for me. Dewsbury had a big pack, small pitch and terrible conditions and heavy pitch suited them. London was at home on the i-pitch. We made them look like world beaters. All well and good, full time squad etc but Whitehaven kept the score closer and Featherstone stuffed them both away from home as well.
The London game was more worrying for me. Dewsbury had a big pack, small pitch and terrible conditions and heavy pitch suited them. London was at home on the i-pitch. We made them look like world beaters. All well and good, full time squad etc but Whitehaven kept the score closer and Featherstone stuffed them both away from home as well.
Fev steamrollered London yesterday but London were tiny in the middle of the park - they had two hookers on the field at the same time (Fozzard and Pelissier) and their starting props Battye and Krasniqi arent very big either, if you saw the two teams lined up at kick off if was no surprise to see Fev roll London up the middle.
For me, the amount of penalties we conceded yesterday really cost us. We lacked discipline and so lost a lot of ground and put ourselves on the back foot too often. If we had not conceded as many penalties then we may not have been so tired from defending and might have had a chance.
For the OuRLeague App, I had no problem with the streaming.
One thing that is clear is that there is as big a split between top half and bottom half clubs in Championship as there was in SL. There’s a long way to go. We will lose more games, but then we will also win some. I’m confident that we can beat most teams at home, and our win ratio away will improve with the weather. Best facets of our game so far look to be handling and speed - so a quick pitch and dry ball are critical. Sure we should have a team for all seasons, but we’ve not, so we need to suck these early defeats up as there will be more of them.
We have a coach with experience we can trust, only a fool would deny that, but he doesn’t have a magic lamp or a money tree so we can’t expect too much. If we can challenge for fifth, that will be a success I feel.
Having watched the game back on OurLeague, I don’t think we were that bad or much worse than them.
They scored off two kicks (one of which was offside) and a shocking one on one miss from Baker. Other than that they did nothing.
We bombed two massive chances; when Dwyer got over the line and lost it and the Mamo one when he should’ve passed inside. Can’t afford not to be taking them.
Think if we went ahead instead of chasing the game we would’ve been pretty comfortable. Thought we were quite patient and completed well in the conditions.
We have to face facts of where we are up to at the moment. But saying we wern't that much worse than Dewsbury makes me feel sad. Let's hope one day we can return to our former glories!