40-20 is a decent win. Thought Maloney was outstanding making metres going forward. Royston was solid as ever.But the Performance was poor for me. Way too many mistakes. No building of pressure and making Keighley work. Poor defence yet again, especially in our 20. Discipline was not good. Against Fev, Leigh, Widnes, Barrow etc we would have struggled big style.
I was disappointed in what Calland had to say after the match when asked why Fax are so inconsistant and what he intends to do. His answer was along the lines" No idea, in the game we are hot and cold...we have a week off and we will look at the video and see what can be done". I was hoping he would say something like. "Well I know where the problem is and what we both as individuals and as a team have to do to become better. We will work on our weakness even more. I believe in the players and know together we will be better next week".

you could tell it was the third game in 6 days.. give a bit of slack eh....

I agree. They were solid enough without being emphatic which you would expect given the 3 in 6.

I agree good to get the win but wasn't a great performance! The score didn't reflect the game for me and we conceded 20 points! Too many mistakes and poor skill levels throughout! But again at least it's a win!

It's been like this for 20 matches. I think it's something we're going to have to live with. Looked a bit sharper in attack today - despite it being the 3rd game in 6 days.

Lets also not forget the negative tactics from keighley... constant holding down and spoiling the ruck didn't help any fluency of the game. A better ref would have penalised them more... but then again it was probably hicks 3rd game in 6 days too...

Took us over an hour to get going but not bad considering our performances of late. And well done to Keighley.



Special mention to Maloney, Black, Gene and Haley who all went well tonight.

agree, there looked a lot of forward passes too that went keighley way.

Its only constant holding down and spoiling the ruck if the ref gives it



I thought the Cougars did well.

Were you stood behind the posts?

You and I had this discussion at the game as he was giving that penalty...

Aye but that was one occasion you were saying it was happening all game

Anyone able to fill me in where the extra thousand people were hiding throughout the game?

A win's a win, let's win ugly until we can build sets, possession & position. These are games we should be winning and are winning, no drama's let's hang in there, it'll come together soon.
No complaints from me.

Know what your saying mate, but today was a good opportunity for us to learn to build pressure-and we failed. Swinton is another good opportunity to do this as well. I would really like Calland to tell his players just play basic football more. That means no silly passes, running on to the ball and then a good kick at the end. In defence, better linespeed and winning the floor. Get the first man to hold them up for a second and a second man coming in and SLOWLY putting them on the floor-this allows the defence time to get back. . Control the speed of the ball and the pace of the game. If we cant do it against the lower sides then we have no chance against the big guns. A win is a win but for me I am looking for more. Maybe thats wrong.

Am I right?! I'm not wrong.

Hey, hold on, clairefaxfan love, that's copyrighted!! I only at a jab at yer the other day cos I know you could never be mine!

Its a win and at times we looked more like where we want to be, Blacky got a terrific break a bit like his old self for one of our tries - at last back yours elf more Blacky you are more dangerous when you run at teams.
Wish we would stop coughing up the ball in our own 20 which set up 2 of their tries tonight, why the long passes on the 1st or 2nd tackles in front of our line???
Keighley cut out the errors and played the last 30 minutes without spilling the ball, very impressive and they did try hard. But we showed how much better than them we are at times we should have 'put them to bed' in the first half and not given thema sniff.
But happier, some players are still out of form like Goddard (2 poor tackles for 2 of their tries) but others are playing better like Patterson and Blacky.
we can get better, it will come we just need to play more possession rugby when we need to and stop Penky kicking the ball!

yes, and could still see the final keighley try was from another forward pass.

terrific 3 points, we can beat anyone in this league if we play like that

By a country mile?

Swifty,can you not find an ounze of respect for Keighleys efforts?I couldnt attend the game last night and as a Keighley supporter i was extremely proud of our efforts,I watched on sky so whilst you talk about forward passes etc and all that the cougars were doing wrong,did you notice the high amounts of head shots on our lads the ref missed?well if you want to be pedantic?! other then that,it was a really entertaining game and my soft spot for fax will continue,i want your lads to win the league,but im convinced if we continue to play like that against the lesser teams for the remainder of the season the GREAT ESCAPE may be on.

Much improved I thought, but still way off where we need to be. Too many dropped balls - can Calland be held responsible for these? Bowman was at fault for 2 of the tries, but he had a good game I thought and once he understands the defensive patterns (!) he'll be ok.

For me, Branighan was always the key signing in close season, he was going to bring a lot of structure and pressure to our game. Black, Penky, Beswick and Gleeson are off the cuff players. I really do think once we get Branighan back we'll see a much improved side - the signs were there at the start of the season and I think things'll pick up once he's back.

Looks like Aizue, Wrench and White are the ones who've taken the fall for the 3 lost games?

See i told you all it will come all good.You just had a blip in form and is better now than at the end of the season.I feel leigh and fev wheels will fall off near to the playoffs.For me Fax,barrow and widnes are the best teams in this league.

I thought we played pretty well all in all last night. I was pleased with Black, Maloney and a few others.

Much better performance and I didn't think there were as many 'silly' errors. We were more patient in attack and didn't push trying to score on the first tackle. Much improved from my perspective, lets keep moving forward fax