Although he did win the game for you today.

Will all those who were last week saying he was rubbish, never rated him, he was only good behind the dominant Bulls pack please stand up and apologise

No

1. He was better then
2. He didn't win the game for us today

Who had the perfect 8 out of 8 kicks today

No. Other than his goal-kicking he was pretty ordinary at best, and was well outclassed by his opposite. With a more effective #7 we may well have been been several scores ahead and the goal-kicking would have been less crucial. Also, many of his kicks were from in front of the goal or not far off, so you would have expected most kickers to kick them. That said, Brough missed one from what you would have thought was a fairly easy position.

Maybe come back and try again when you have some more facts and not just what it says in the post-match press report?

Did you watch the game? If not, may I recommend you stop now.

His goal kicking was excellent. There's never any doubting that aspect of his game. However as you'll see from the comments of people who were at the game, the rest of his match was poor. He dropped easy catches, threw bad passes and generally was badly out of form.

A lesson in not looking at the scoresheet to see how good a player is.

I have always been a supporter of Deacs but apart from the 8 goals today he had a lousy game.

Yes I know that is what won us the game but he dropped too much ball, missed tackles and looked dead on his feet after 20 minutes.

If he's really that injured then it's great credit to him that he got the goals - all the more reason for dropping him for a few weeks to give him chance to recover for the run-in

Early on, ie before he was flattened, he was very dominant in the attack with good breaks and passes. He wasn't a weak link at any point, and to say he was worse than Brough is ridiculous. As the game went on Brough showed more variety, but he had to as his team were losing!

You were watching a different game to most other people.

Yes very early on like the first five minutes he looked sharp after that he slipped in to the old routine.

I saw a very disappointing Deacon today. He looks injured too. So why is he playing?

Beacuse you rely too much on him - bit like we do with Briers. Both our teams totally different ( for the worse) when these two are missing.

Good win for you today, see you all next week - should be a cracker. We are playing with some good form at the mo

Deacon wasn't playing in either of the two impressive wins the Bulls have managed this season.

Dont believe that! If so, fair play to you but you do rely on him as we do with Briers. Your a better team with him than without. Put it this way, I hope the little f%%er is dropped, rested whatever next week, it makes our game that little bit easier

to be fair he took an almighty hit after 15mins or so and struggled therein after ... maybe he should have been brought off who knows, but he was going OK up until that point ... hey what do I know!

That seems to be the script for most games, sadly!

Sadly he doesn't have an impact either way anymore.

Durham Giant,

Allow me to put this in a way you'll understand, since apparently you managed to assess Deacon's performance without actually seeing him play today.


Think to how when Chris Thorman was playing fullback for you. I saw quite a bit of Huddersfield in that year or two, so know what I'm saying here.

Let's say there was a match where you scored 5 tries and got 3 kickable penalties. Thorman, as first choice kicker, kicked 4 goals from under the sticks, 3 goals from fairly decent positions, and 1 from the touchline.

Did that make him a good fullback?

Answer? No. He was god awful as a fullback. But hey, since he kicked a bunch of goals in a game, he should have got man of the match right?

You're right.

I await the revelation that Deacon played against Leeds and Saints in full body disguise, in place of one of his team-mates.

Perhaps he got a bit tanned, donned a fat suit, a wig and a scrum cap, then wore number 26 on his back.

Oh hang on, he was injured too wasn't he....

Oh dear.

as has been said by others, he was good for about 4 min in open play and his goalkicking was excellent. But he also throw out some very slow dodgy passes, placed at least two grubbers into the hands of wakey players only about a meter in front of him and generally looked right off the pace and showed no creative spark at all. but yes he clearly won the game for us

can't really add much to that pretty accurate assesment

He was terrible on the radio.

Didn't hear him on the radio , but he was not good on the field, amd thats awefully sad but true.
End of an era and demise of a legend.

Im not looking to critise deacs in particular and I'm not trying to "stick the boot in" and I say that as a previous defender and admirer of deacs. He has been great for us and was part of the reason we won so much with him at scrum half. (I've never bought the nonsence that we won so much [idispite [/ihaving deacs at 7)

But he is not the player he was and hasn't been consistantly for some time now and had another nightmare overall today, now, if thats because he cant function as well without a dominant pack, or he's taken one or ten too many serious bangs to the head such that his confidence has gone, or hes just having a poor season like so many others are is open to debate. But I fail to see any debate in the fact that he is clearly not playing up to the standard he has and can (?) play to. And to suggest he won the game today suggests the OP was not watching the same game as I did.

His passing is getting worse and worse, and I agree, he took on the defence early on, but then in attack he was virtually non-existant. On a more positive note the other major underperformer (Langley) had a good game today and broke the line several times. I just can't help thinking that if he hadn't bulked up so much he would have had the pace to score them, instead of relying on the BEAVERRRR



. Please stay on another year Menzies, you are a joy to watch.