For a bloke who only landed in the country a few weeks ago, probably had only a few training sessions and is probably yet to fully integrate into the squad "ethos" then I think he did well enough. Let's not get too carried away with performances today, after all it's a long, long season.

I suggest that the pitch looked good because it had been narrowed to preserve the area nearest to the South Stand that has always suffered over the winter months due to it getting no sun.
When RL was a winter sport that part of the pitch was always heavy & tended to cut up, exacerbated with the failure of the undersoil heating & then further when the RU boys joined us while both teams shared the pitch for games & training between December & April.
Glad it looked so much better let's hope it stays like that till the grass starts to grow again.

FWIW I thought he had a good game and looked solid all round

Pitch was surprisingly good and was even green(ish) something it was not last year, I thought we played well for 1st hit out and was impressed by cross and with JP back it will be a good pack, Glad Liam Hood got a run out I think he will improve with every game he manages to get, As for Wakey I think its gonna be a long season

Didnt get that impression from the interview I read thought he was saying he was a solid player and will be consistent player.
I thought he had a good game. Some of his runs and moves were miss timed insecond half but that will improve with more time with the team, he ain't been with the squad very long

I agree ,he was just saying "he does what it says on the tin" hard yards ,plenty of graft and unspectacular.
He'll be a decent signing imo and will also allow Kylie to go back to what he does best high impact in short stints.

Really?

What he actually said was...[iThere were some good signs out there. Kevin Sinfield and Rob Burrow combined well and Ben Cross showed us what we can expect from him every week.[/i

Hardly the negative opinion you attribute to him.

Only read the interview did not see his performance, but he actually said "I don't know if he can do any better than Saturday, but that he will do that every week".

Whether that is causing any confusion I don't know, but I view it the same way as you and the others, that he was just highlighting how consistent he will be and will keep taking the ball up.

I was impressed overall.

The last 3 tries were sloppy but given that it was a friendly and they'd already seen JJB limp off, coupled with the fact the game was won, you can understand the wingers not diving to clear the ball or chasing back as hard etc. From what I could see it was a Coady mistake which lead to one, which again, is fine. There's a reason he's not in the first team regularly and I don't mind the youngsters making mistakes, good learning experience.

We looked to have some great options in attack, (Wakefield were poor, if I were a fan I'd be worried!) but you can only play who's put in front of you. Considering we looked that good in attack and who was missing (Senior, Hall, Leuluai, Buderus, Hauraki [not to mention JP & Mags) I was on the whole, impressed.

Hood looked lively too! Not sure how much game time he'll get (if any!) but looks good for the future if we keep hold of him.

Cross was.... indifferent. But first games (especially for our Antipodean recruits) are usually a non-event to say the least. I don't think we can judge him on that. His attitude seemed decent enough so time will tell!

I would suggest the pitch looked so much better due to the management plan Jason Booth put in place to protect it from over use.

Nobody is allowed to train on it these days, so the only use it gets over the winter is once a fortnight for Carnegie home games. Must make it a lot easier to maintain.

Agree, I was pleased to read that on the club website. Most sensible IMV given the issues last year. But they did narrow the pitch as well.
Again this year we should see very little use of the pitch as car park since there's no 5 day test at Headingley this summer.

That wasn't to protect the pitch though. Carnegie have been doing it all season to stop the ball being thrown wide and to make games a forward battle as that's their strength. It's the narrowest allowed by the RFU.

Good to hear at least one Headingley employee has learnt something from his past mistakes.

It would never have happened (and didn't) in Keith Boyce's days.

Agree with the rest of what you said but not on this. He made 1 mistake that was his fault where he looked up just as was catching the ball and spilled it. The other mistake was when Hood was trying to be clever and it was just a mis-timed pass. Apart from that he took the ball in hard everytime and always found his front making hard yards and was all over the place making tackles for fun.

To say he's only been in the country a couple of weeks and will be behind on fitness compared to the rest I would sat he had a good game. I agree with McDermott that what you see is what you get and I'm fine with that. I don't want all my props playing like stand offs. We have Peacock, Bailey and Burgess who like to pass the ball every now and then added to Kylie and now Cross who will be used as battering rams. A nice mix if you ask me.

But Keith Boyce didn't have to cope with RU being played on the pitch & the undersoil heating still worked in his day.

Don't get me wrong, I like Cross!! I'm just saying, many expect him to come on and blow them away with how good he is, whereas my point was that generally the Aussie/NZ signings never have the impact on Debut people seem to hope for.

Totally agree with the "what you see is what you get" line. I'm happy for him to do that as you mentioned. Didn't mean my OP to criticise him, as said... I like him.

Keith Boyce had more 1st team games, 'A' team games, Internationals plus the ground was used by the RFL to clear backlogged cup-ties that simply couldn't be played elsewhere and still had plenty of grass on it during winters that were probably both wetter and colder than the likes of ones we generally see these days.

I'll let you off then



But I dont think anyone expected to be blown away by him anyway. A lot on here were "underwhelmed" by the signing. I think he is solid though and will do a good job. If we are going to play that expansive, get the ball wide style that we played saturday we will do it better off the back of forwards who make the hard yards first. Cross and Peacock will make 100+ metres a game and 2 of the other 3 will make 60 or so if last year is any thing to go by. Hes also an extra aid in clearing our own line. Something we strugled at times doing last year. I can only see his signing as a good thing personally.

Any word on Ryan Tongia?

Who ,where ,why how?

Maybe Cross is going to be a Marc Glanville type of player.
From what I've read from & about him he seems a sensible guy who's still got plenty in the tank despite his age.

Yep a no frills "does what it says on the tin" type of player and will allow the likes of Kylie to go back to high impact shorter stints and mean less game-time for Kirke if he's used as a back up prop.

As it is Kirke, I presume you meant She's?

Not a kirke fan but he had a good game on new years day, seemed to run stronger than I have seen of him last year

Didn't he knock on with his first touch?

That aside, he put in a respectable performance. I do however think that he was outshone by Burgess and Cross.