Congrats to the Eagles today, i thought they played very well and their will to win was Fantastic. Ok we had an off day but all in all a very well deserved win for Sheffield. Well played lads !

Far and away the better side on the day. Scored a couple of good tries in the second half too. Good passing leading to a break and support play. Normally seen by us against other teams.

Yes indeed - i second that; apart from Johnny Woodcockhead. The ref should have binned him after his umpteenth attempt to waste time. What a pain in the 'arris.

Amazing how teams have an off day when they get beat



I think Sheffield deserve big credit as they had a fair few injuries today by the looks of it.

Absolutely. Fax did play poorly - compared to what they've served up previously but Sheffield were very "nuggetty" and made easy yards. Ropati had a good game and did plenty of damage. They were proper fired up and deserved their win with aplomb.

Eagles played simple Aston type rugby. 5 drives & a kick mostly, but they did do us damage on their right side.

The ref was appaling. Calling for high shots when the attacker was grabbed round the shoulders! Penky did well to keep his cool when he was pinged for this following his kick.

Thank god we dont get Leahy that often, makes even Hicks look good!

a kicker has one minute in which to take a kick and as soon as he passed the minute the clock was stopped, unless your colin whitfield and then you get sin binned

Rubbish. It's his prerogative if he wants to take his time over a goal kick, and the ref's prerogative if he thinks it's sufficient enough to stop the clock.

hope these type threads dont appear every time we lose

maybe now calland will get on with coaching instead of giving it big what fors

Maybe you'll stick to your own board and wonder why Haven are crap. You've lost 4 matches dickwad - get over it.

It's not in the spirit of the game though. It's certainly not what fans want to watch every time he takes a kick.

It was nothing to do with us losing today but come on those goal kicks took an age, every time even in front of the posts why?
There was no need unless they thought it was a good way to lose time and I have a suspicion thats exactly why he did it?
No sour grapes just annoying to watch, even if it had been Patterson I would say just get on with it.
Surely the time should be off until he runs to kick the ball?

Whilst Woodcocks slow kicks were pretty annoying I dont think the ref did anything wrong with them. The rules say that once a minute is up the clock stops, until he starts to move to kick. On each occasion the ref looked at his watch and then stopped the clock. I also doubt it was any clear attempt to slow the game down, as he took exactly the same time to take the kick when the game was over.

I await this tactic at the Don Valley against Batley then

There is actually no stipulation on time for kicking at goal. The only rule says

SECTION 13 Penalty Kick

5. No Delay - No player shall deliberately take any action which is
likely to delay the taking of a penalty kick.

Should the kickers side infringe then:

6. If the kick is not taken as stated or if a player of the
infringes kicker’s team infringes, a scrum shall be formed at
the mark, provided it is no closer than twenty metres
to the touch line.

However the ref has a duty to not allow time to be lost. The only thing that covers the time taken is that the ref can stop the clock if he feels the kicker has taken enough time to do his job. The rough rule is a minute but is not set in stone. It could be ten seconds if the kicker chooses to throw the ball away from his point rather then set up the kick.

However woodcock didn't break any rules, the ref just applied the laws.

Sheffield came with spoiling and slowing the game down tactics and executed it perfectly so well done to them. I suppose a positive out of yesterday is we are no longer waiting for our first "fall" and am pretty certain we can't play as bad as that again!!!

Matt Calland had been saying your defence hadn't been doing its job properly and you'd reggret it if it wasn't tightened up, which I presume is what happened. Like all coaches, he can only do so much - I do wonder what goes on between the ears of some rugby players - not least ours last Thursday.

Hard luck but it gives the rest of us a bit of a filip now.

It'll be nice to see you there.

The kicks will be just the same. That's his style.

Not much!

True but at home, no bonus point and to the seagulls are just about as bad as it gets in my book!

I think sheffield are a decent side, I know they'd only won 1 game (i think) until yesterday but they've only lost all their other games by 12 or less. The number of ex fax players they have in their team means that they were always going to be up for it yesterday, plus they had a number of players out injured. Think Shffield will be more than competitive when they get players such as Groom back playing.

I agree regarding the bonus point though, shocking not to get one, especially as we had one in the bag with about a minute to go!

Keep underestimating us. We don't mind.