Good to watch a live game after such a long gap, even if it was freezing. On the posisitves Sidlow was immense. He made plenty of ground and I thought brought much more aggression against a tough Fev pack than he did last year. He put on a couple of monster hits that lifted the team and the fans. Mathers made a one on one tackle that saved a try. Not sure anyone else could have done that. My main plus from the new players was WElham. He lost the ball in contact three times but was solid as a rock in defence. He looks like a great winger's centre in the Paul Loughlin mode. Lowes said they'd played together at KR and wanted to biold that partnership. It was a good hit out against a tough team. On the downside what the hell does Lauaki bring? Ten minutes and zero impact from an impact prop. Lowes hasn't learnt from this has he? We cannot afford to play every game with sixteen players. Addy was quiet despite his great kick for one of Caro's tries. I feel that if we had a good organiser at scrum half the gap would have been bigger today. Overall quite pleased though, we didn't lose did we

It is only round 1, so I'd expect a build toward the end of the season

And we still won!

Oh aye, I know - 'course it was only the first match for Fev as well, though they lost, so haven't been on here telling us about it!

I'm sure it will get better, or we're in for a long hard season. For one thing, I don't think the players will be too pleased, never mind the coach. We definitely can't afford to be soft up at Whitehaven on Saturday though, they got a tubbing at Fax last Sunday so will have a point to prove...though, I guess so have our pack.

That's the spirit!!

To be fair to our pack we were a prop down most of match and 2 down in 2nd half. Thought we coped with that remarkably well. It probably contributed a bit to us losing collision so much as well. Looks like lauaki's short stint was due to injury rather than fitness, which ties in with him doing 40 mins week before. So maybe we're being a bit harsh on him.

One thing I noticed in first half was we were losing ball in tackle a lot. At first I thought it was poor ball retention on our part, then I noticed fevs number 6 ( Briggs?) was coming into tackles as third man and attempting to punch the ball out rather than tackling. Think our coaches noticed it as well and said something in dressing room at ht as he didn't have as much success with tactic in 2nd half.

Aye you are spot on there. He ended up punching Addy instead, then it all kicked off