What I did notice about today's games was the effort and enthusiasm of Ben Kaye he ia a human dynamo,after every tackle and Toulouse forced error he was trying to lift the team ,and even encouraging the crowd to get behind the Fax lads, for me Murrell is past it,both Fax halves failed to create anything, but the conditions were terrible.I stand by my 7th place prediction.

Well I've watched fax for over 30 years too lol and we've been worse, top four is a push, but aside from both Rovers and London there are a lot of average sides this season that will be nicking points of each other one week and capitulating the next, someone will sneak in, probably Batley, but this is possibly our most important season in a decade, so ill remain positive and hope they can over achieve.

Luck plays a part.
That's how we made the top 4, then crap.

The crowd plays a part as well
that season we made the 4, the fans helped the team step up an extra gear imo (like chanting even when the opposition scored)

Sadly that has dropped off due to us not making the 4 last season

Aww come on !



Is that the worst decision of the afternoon ?



You should've seen the try off the outrageous forward pass at Rervers yesterday .....

As has been mentioned DR makes it a non level playing field but we have to do whatever it takes to succeed while we have the non level playing field. Look at Fev, Sharp raving before the season how he would give Fev players a chance in the early games but as soon as DR players made available he snapped Leeds hand off because he knows their players are better than what he has available. Take away the dual reg like yesterday and Fev are no longer a sure thing for the top 4. As on the other thread I have no preference to where players come from who play for us and if better is available then we should use them.

I have no affiliation to any BOD member, coach or particular player.

A question I ask myself regarding them all is if the BOD aren't doing a good enough job then who else is waiting in the wings to take over, can anyone name someone else, anyone prepared to do the job yet alone the multimillionaire that it would take and even then no guarantees.

If RM isn't good enough to do the job then who could we get that is guaranteed to do a better job, can anyone name the person.

If certain players aren't good enough then who could we get that is guaranteed to do a better job, can anyone name them.

The fact is that no millionaire is waiting to come in.

There are no really top line coaches that are waiting to come in, it's just the same ones who are out of work for a reason to choose from.

There are no star players waiting to come in, it's just the same ones who are of Championship standard to choose from.

All the clubs at this level just keep changing places over any given time and occasionally one or two take their place at the top, have a half decent run for for a short time before slipping back again.

The problem is as you touch on, we go fully down the DR road and play a number of fringe Salford players, what is to say these fringe players are any better than what we have?
What happens when Salford recall the players?
What happens to the Fax players who are being left out at their expense?
DR has been introduced primarily for the benefit for the SL clubs, not the Championship and if "used to the full" by more and more Championship sides will mean the SL clubs are the masters of us all.
Using Fev in your example any seeming benefit that a Championship club gets is purely short term at best for them, the danger is that other clubs who loose games against the hybrid teams could suffer much longer term damage as they struggle on.
Before the Cas game it was said to Brian Mac that at least the players coming in from Fev would be match fit, he replied "Yes and this is what DR is all about, in his (and others eyes) DR and thus the Championship is there just to keep their players match fit.

DR should be removed with a maximum of 2 loan players allowed.
SL clubs should have the means and responsibility within themselves to look after the players they sign at every level and not be allowed to abdicate that and farm out anyone "they" choose when "they" want so "they" benefit.

Interesting article by Craig Harrison in this week's Express.

Just saying what we all knew - youth policy is non-existent.

The League Weekly only gave the ref 3/10, was he really that bad ?

And the announced crowd was 1272. Looking at the highlights on the Toulouse website it looks like there were a lot less.

Personally i thought we got the rub of green for second week running of a poor referee.The try Toulouse got chalked when Murrell lost ball would have been given 9 times out of 10.Didn't like Campbell and the Rochdale fans were still bemoaning his display at the HKR game last week.He couldn't even get the knock on signal correct-looked like he was calling for a stretcher

.Crowd looked about right would put it 250/300 down on the Saturday football attendance which was given at 1800 but has the season ticket factor this season that inflated our crowds last year.

I have be critical of how the club is run in a number of areas, but I think that "faxcar" has this spot on. We are a second tier club now, and will continue to be unless we get some substantial funding from someone (who doesn't appear to be on the horizon at all). As a consequence we will only become a regular top four club if we have a season where we perform above our expectations and then use the funds wisely to buy the cream of the players available at this level...whoever they may be at the time.

My main concern is that the club now appears to be one which is not attracting many young fans or new fans (like a number of other clubs), the poor poor state of our amateur and junior game, with the added problem of poor junior development in the UK, and as SL continues its decline (and it is declining in standard and support) then youngsters will not be attracted to the sport at all and the overall decline will continue. In a way this is exactly what SL was introduced to combat.

He was appalling. Too easily influenced by the players and not helped out by his touch judges. Fairbank got pulled for a shoulder charge on about 3 occasions yet one of Toulouse's big lads had exactly the same technique in every tackle he put in without penalty. I think the ref really needs to look in the rule book as to what constitutes a shoulder charge. That said we did not lose the game because of the ref we lost because we were unable to unlock the Toulouse defence which given how many points they have shipped over here is quite shocking and that is the main reason we have struggled the past couple of seasons.

How a sport that claims to be professional can not force teams to run reserve grades is beyond me. It is literally a joke.

We were poor in attack yesterday - our goaline defence was good but we were devoid of ideas in attack , ball out on the full three times , countless knock ons and silly penalties - vitriolic complaints about the Toulouse 'Try' only paper over the cracks as does the close 10-12 scoreline.

Made me laugh all our Fans on social media upset about the injustice of the dodgy Try - these things happen in sport - I seem to remember in 2015 the Bulls had to settle for one point at Batley when Batley scored a conversion or late penalty that never went over but it was awarded - and most Fax Fans had a good laugh about it.

There is a malaise around the Shay when there used to be a buzz - 1272 people only yesterday when crowd was consistently 7-800 higher only a few years ago and in terms of marketing we do nothing worthwhile to attract people to come down think we charge too much as well.

Its catch 22, how many do you think it would put on the gate by reducing prices by a couple of quid or so? Im not sure it would be enough to make up the shortfall and when that happens someone else has to make it up and the club has even less money to spend elsewhere. Its a vicious circle although I agree it is a lot to pay to watch the standard that we are at but its probably fair compared to other teams especially given the stadium we get to watch it in.

As for advertising it probably costs the club a lot of money and not helped by the courier going away from been a daily paper to a weekly one. Like I see posters up in the places I go on a weekly basis but they are put up by people who follow the club and its about getting new people interested but that is a problem across the whole of RL. How can we expect outsiders to love the game when most people who follow the game feel it is a shambles.

I think the club do excellent advertising particularly on social media and do's at the Shay etc.Another good example is the bash IMO a real dead duck in comparison to last 2 years but they are avidly promoting it 100 days off/tickets on sale yesterday etc etc.Valid point GRB
makes us fans see this but how many non fans become aroused(if that's right word

)

Made me laugh all our Fans on social media upset about the injustice of the dodgy Try - these things happen in sport - I seem to remember in 2015 the Bulls had to settle for one point at Batley when Batley scored a conversion or late penalty that never went over but it was awarded - and most Fax Fans had a good laugh about it. Part quote.

Agreed, from a fans perspective as long as our side wins or the dodgy or even the blatantly obvious wrong decisions go our way not much is said until it costs us.
Most will agree that every side will be on the receiving end sooner rather than later.
However why should it be accepted practice that this is going to happen time and time again.
It's not our job to provide refs with sufficient competence to be able to control a game to an acceptable standard where human error is the exception and not the rule like it is now.
As with fringe players we now have fringe referees.
Once again these guys are learning their trade in division 1 and the Championship at our expense.
The real bad news is that some of the SL refs hardly stack up and their controller was probably the most controversial man in the middle of all time when it came down to correct decision making.

Agreed, from a fans perspective as long as our side wins or the dodgy or even the blatantly obvious wrong decisions go our way not much is said until it costs us.
Most will agree that every side will be on the receiving end sooner rather than later.
However why should it be accepted practice that this is going to happen time and time again.
It's not our job to provide refs with sufficient competence to be able to control a game to an acceptable standard where human error is the exception and not the rule like it is now.
As with fringe players we now have fringe referees.
Once again these guys are learning their trade in division 1 and the Championship at our expense.
The real bad news is that some of the SL refs hardly stack up and their controller was probably the most controversial man in the middle of all time when it came down to correct decision making.'"

We are clutching at straws if we are blaming officials. The fact is these decisions even themselves out over the course of the season. We are not good at winning games ugly and for whatever reason come out on the wrong side of close games. We struggle to score points is my early season evaluation. At Rochdale we struggled to break their line with 11 men. Its okay building your game on defense but if you cant score points how do you expect to win?

3 out of 10 is a subjective score/opinion, he may well have been poor in one light, and he relied on his touch judge for the contentious call, so I cant fault him alone for that. Where I view a ref as bad is if he is not consistent, and he was pretty consistent in that he gave good calls and bad calls against both, we didn't lose because of the ref, we actually had a chance to win because of calls he gave us towards the end, and then he gave Toulouse the chance to win with a call, the difference is Toulouse took their chance.

As for our wider issues, this might be controversial but I've said before we need exposure, and Fax TV should be taking a hit and getting the highlights available to as many people as possible to try and entice them down, I see no long term benefit from a couple of hundred people who saw the game paying a fiver extra to scroll through a rerun, I think they need to readdress this piece of flawed marketing sooner rather than later. It might pay for itself as an experiment but I would suggest it does not bring extra customers through the door or sell a single shirt, come on guys were not Barcelona, were dying a slow death.

It's not a case of the board not being up to it, or Richard not being capable, or the players not trying, but were making costly mistakes from top to bottom for over a season now, and nothing appears to be coming off in our favour. the board is going to have to dig deep, Richard and the boys will have to dig in, and the fans will have to stick by them, for me we have to find a way to bring in a quality play maker, and we have to get the exposure out there so people have more access to what a great game it can be. Watching Cas and Leeds on Sky isn't the answer. This is death by a thousand cuts if we don't show some inspired leadership and vision.

If we have to wait until next season for a crop of young talent to come through and take us up a notch then so be it, but we could end up playing front of 750 and have no confidence as a team, and our budget for next year will be nothing to write home about. From the moment we spanked Bradford in the middle 8's we've slipped on every level, apart from getting local players in the side.

No magic wand here and there has to be an element of realism. We are part time, have no major revenue streams as a result of not owning the ground/own clubhouse/food and drink.
Our spectator age demograph is not balanced between youth and older. No money man to fall back on.
We all want the best players, success, and big crowds for the Fax but the reality is that we are in an arm wrestle to sustain the business and be successful both on and off the field with the cards we currently have been dealt with.
As regards the game yesterday we lost to a full time team by 2 points, defended very well but that graft took the gas out of us on attack at times.
Our discipline needs to get better to stop giving soft penalties and the ball away cheaply.Game management in close games also needs to improve. These are things under RM's and the players control and we musn't lose site of the fact key players were not in there yesterday like Rob; Grady; Heaton; Moore(s); O' Brien. and permanently lost Mitch early in the game meaning 16 players sharing all the interchanges.
It's a tough month looming looking at the fixtures and we need to get behind the team and hold firm.

just watched the try again on Toulouse tv. still looks as bad as did from the stands. I thought it was only last week RFL was cracking down on the throwing balls at oponents and diving for penalties. the last one for Toulouse is a clear dive.
surprised got 3/10 after watching replays

From 1:10 into this video if you want to see the Toulouse no. 4 fail to ground the ball again... [urlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKHtUE5upY0[/url