If these stories of drinking to excess and poor discipline are true I really fear another season of no silverware. I know we are part time but this is no excuse for less than professional behaviour at all times. The club will not achieve anything meaningful if it does not strive to be 100% professional in all aspects of running the club. Anything less and we can forget SL for good!

as a hardended drinker of say at least 20 years! and a now former publican, not in halifax i might add, and at a venue that too many to name not that i would, current and past Super leauge players use to frequent on a sunday night, from many teams!

i can say that drinking culture has little to no impact on players- u either chose to drink or not - no drinking 2/3 days before a game seems to be about right - if u a phsically fit then no problem, it tends to be down to how your body reacts, some are better than others. And these players know how to hanlde their bodes, they get enough instruction on it!

I use to get players in from Bradford when they were winning year on year, St Helens, Wigan, Wakefiled, Hudds, Leeds and a few others, they use to get so drunk it was beyond belief - many of them were internationals - i never saw any of my Sl players struggling the week after a big sesh at mine, and boy they were big! , in deed the majority were all at the peek of the powers!

There was one player probably the most famous in the leauge at the time, that used to order 20 drinks at a time, the first time he did this i tried to get him to half his order, but soon got used to him doing this so i gave up and joined in! other players used to try and copy him - but to no avail!

The funnest thing was they were always impecably behaved and if i said jump they asked how high! i once took 5 players to a night club after mine, the door staff left me in charge, when they all fell asleep one by one - i had to throw em out as the door staff would not go near, when i said time to go they all went! the only trouble i ever had was with non players, hangeroners, they could never drink for toffee! and i regually turned non players away, sometimes at the request of players! some very funny and entertaining nights!

I could tell some right stories - but i am saving them for my book!

To say that the 'events' of the Toulouse weekend had no influence on the game against Fev on friday night is very naive indeed. I'm not going to go down the road of drinking culture etc etc. My main concern is the recovery time for the players.

When the final whistle blew in Toulouse, the enitre Halifax staff knew they had a game, less than 6 days later against one of the form teams of our division. With this in mind they went out and got into a right state (I know, I was there).
The drinking continued until the plane landed at manchester, I cannot account for what happened after bags were collected as I left for home. So at this point the next game was less than 5 days away.

I took monday and tuesday off work to recover from Toulouse, still felt less than 100 percent on wednesday. But thought nothing of it until friday morning when I had to partake in a lengthy run at a decent pace (part of my job). I usually would have no trouble in leading my lads on these runs, however, on this occasion after 4 miles I was in real trouble, no energy.

After the game on friday night, walking back to my car, listening to my son complain about Laughton. I commented to my wife that the team seemed to run out of energy with 30mins to go. She simply asked me "Would you of been able to play 80 minutes tonight?" the answer i gave was an honest "No chance". I played the game at a fairly high level for a long time and know what it takes out of the body and mind.

So my concern isn't the so called drinking culture, just the timing of the drinking that took place.

We lost on friday night because Fev had the energy in the last 20 minutes and we were out on our feet.

I agree 100%. We are supposed to be making a concerted effort to get into SL and the club are asking us to back them. Well if the team aren't committed why should the supporters be? If they would prefer to party then, fair enough, let's just settle for being an average Championship side.

This thread is starting to get a bit silly now imo. Im quite sure that they all had plenty of time to recover. Come on fans lets get behind the club and the boys and focus on the rest of the season.

Ditto