Surprised there hasn’t been a thread made yet! How would you guys go? Bustin, Magrin, Pickersgill and Roche are all included despite being left out or not in Kear’s plans. So minimum two will play. With Crossley out it will be tough for the forwards. I’d like to see us line up:

Ryan
Foggin-Johnston
Webster
Oakes
Grant
Pickersgill
Lilley
Kirk
Wildie
Bustin
Minchella
Farrell
Hallas

Flanagan
Wood
Peltier
Storton/Roche

If we need size to beat the Batley pack maybe drop Pickersgill. Wildie to SH, Hallas to Hooker, Wood to 13 with a bench of Flanagan, Peltier, Roche and Storton. Magrin gets nowhere near for now.

I thought everyone had gone on their jollys. I think after watching the Barrow game I'd like to see Pickersgill given a go in the halves just for the hell of it. Surely there's nothing to lose ?

That was my thinking. I think Roche needs to show up well today too. If he doesn’t I’d be tempted to play Gallagher/Scurr/Hodgson in the next game.

I think the big need is to show we are over the 'Challenge Cupitis' and are back on full power for the rest of the season. We have injuries, and a few mental scars from the big games, I know, but everyone has injuries at this stage of the season, if not the mental bits. JK says they look at games in blocks which is a reasonable way at do things - well that 'block' is over so let's get to it.

Big game this I feel. (to be fair, most games are big with the league being so close) but a loss today and then Leigh at their place followed by Fax, our season could really come off the rails.

I was confident of a win earlier in the week, but Batley got a good win against Fax and look to have a strong squad for this one. Interesting to see how Butterworth goes against us. With O'brien & Leeming both looking like long term options for the Giants, I just can't see how Reiss will progress there.

Well we struggled at times, completion rate in the first half must have been under 50% we dropped it that much. However our defence was really good and won us that game. To nil anybody in this game is a great achievement, I'm sure Kear will be thrilled to bits that we didn't concede.

Tough set of games coming up now though.

Great defensive effort.

We dropped the ball a lot, but there were some decent bits of play (even if few and far between).

Be interesting to see if we can improve when Keyes is back fit.

Pretty much what i was saying earlier in the week, you can sum us up as:

1. Very stiff defence, excellent organisation, works very hard

2. A bit ponderous in attack, most of the time our last tackle plays are predictable and we find it very hard to break the line, don't seem to ever look much like scoring when camped in the opposition half, and generally score far too few points.

3. Give away an incredible amount of possession and position through bad decisions and unforced errors. This:-
- (a) reduces our chance to attack as we keep needlessly giving the ball away; and
- (b) tires us out, as we have to then defend numerous extra sets, when we should have the ball (Note - this means the Defence is actually even better than the stats suggest, as we are having to do waaaaaaay too much defending du
we to mistakes)
4. Have a good team ethic and play to the end.

I wasn't writing them down, but today I counted THIRTEEN instances of giving away possession. Most of them in the first half. You get so you [iexpect[/i the ball to go to ground.

It was good that we kept going, stayed determined, and the defence was outstanding. I even quite enjoyed a lot of our rugby in the last quarter, and we can take away a lot from that performance. Wish we could take away the dropsy.

Don't think the conditions helped handling, to be fair, and both sides suffered through it. The defence was awesome though, a big fat zero in the against column is a big thing. Fortunately Batley seemed to suffer the same dis-inclination to give the ball any air (understandable, in the wet), kicks apart, so we were rarely troubled at the back as the kicks were dealt with very well. We'll miss Ethan next year in that department.
I heard Disko complaining that Batley wouldn't have scored if they'd still been playing (this was around 6 o'clock) and he wasn't wrong. Whilst we didn't create all that much more on attack we did take what chances we had pretty well. Two cracking finishes from DFJ.

I not sure that all the lost possession was due to us, Batley went for the ball a lot of the time and got the call.
We did look tired but the defence was great, still a bit wanting in attack.
The ref was blatantly bias towards Batley one instance on our line Batley just put the ball on the floor from a standing position and rolled it to the side and the ref called play on very poor.
well done team.

Ironically I thought we looked to do more with the ball in the first half than we had in weeks. Attempted offloads and everything. That seemed to contribute to the errors but it was better to watch.

Our first two tries were down to quick hands down the left as well. Makes a change.

Why didn't we do it in better conditions when the ball was easier to catch I don't know.

Thought that moving Mini to loose forward helped a great deal. Both halfbacks played better and Ryan was great defensively. It was the defensive effort that stood out. We had a lot of sets on our line and did well. Batley didn't offer much but kept at it. They look lacking in ideas and coming from seeing us that's saying something.

Thought Storton had one of his best games. Man of the match for me.

Wildie playing out of position was very good I thought; kept things moving and had a few good kicks too.

Thank god you said this! I was just reading this forum and wondering if I’d watched a different first half? In that first 20 minutes we played more attacking rugby than I have seen in the past 2-3 games. We actually used dummy runners and tested Batley’s inside defence. We tried offloading more as you stated.

The one thing I thought we didn’t do quite so well was play the conditions better. I’d have liked to have seen more kicks bouncing into touch than the up and under’s we were doing especially after Scott caught the first 2-3.

Agreed on the defensive effort. In relation to Ryan the only thing I think he lacks at FB is the poachers instinct of a Withers or McNally. But his positional play is great, as is his last man defence.

Roche actually played okay today and took the ball in well. Oakes showed why he was a wingers centre and reclaimed some form that he had in 2017. His reading of Batley’s attack was great too! DFG was brilliant today and finished well! There were one or two instances where I thought Farrell could have moved the ball on but he took the tackle, but tbf he made the right decision and played the conditions.

Overall a very pleasing performance. Great to get the 0 for Batley. But let’s not get excited. Still lots to improve on. But put’s us in a good position.

Looking forward to Keyes, Evans and Hitchcox returning to reserves duty next week!

Agree about Oakes. Interesting to see what happens when Evans is back fit.

With the youthful squad Kear is building, the disruption in the halves (partially self inflicted) and several key injuries, I think remaining well in the play off mix at this stage is a real positive.

We need to keep improving but I’m excited for the back end of the season, especially if Keyes and Jy are back fit and firing.

I think the team seemed more balanced today and I thought we did well under the conditions. The zero was the icing on the cake. Anyone else notice JK was up watching from the South bank and not in the dug out.

I noticed JK wasn't on the touch line in front of the dug out where he normally stands but I was situated too far from the Southbank to spot him there.

From the photos I have seen - there looked to be nobody there.

Was there less than 3000 spectators?

If so, I wonder why the attendances are falling..

The terraces were pretty empty, but to be fair I reckon the weather had an effect yesterday.

I sat in my car until 20 mins before kick off and in that time there were 4 cars with bulls fans who pulled up, checked the weather and went back out the gate. Guessing even more didn’t set foot out the door at all,

The rugby recently on show would have probably put a fair few off. But yesterday it was probably due to such bad weather at the start.

Haven't heard an attendance announced. Downpour halh hour before game will have put some of. Touchdown was busy first half as a lot watched from inside until rain stopped. Main stand was noticeably fuller than usual too so think a fair few paid to upgrade and sit under the roof.

This was my train of thought...

Its been a prolonged run of dour displays and I wondered when/if it would begin to tell...

Have to say that I'm not as up beat as most on here.

We have lost out head of youth, our best upcoming youngster and Ethan Ryan and my suspicion is all three are down to lack of funds.

We lost Damian Irvine to Bradford PA and he immediately secures new sponsorship for them - with their owner (who WAS interested in Bulls) setting a budget of £1.4 million for a team!

We end up with Chalmers - no pot to pea in, Duffy and RHP - with Nigel Wood in the background for some reason...

Why did Damian Irving move to Bradford PA from us?

Just find the back office stuff depressing - but hey ho - glass half empty and all that.

Oh, and yes, the style of play? Doesn't bring feet through the gate - which adds to the financial problem bit.....

It was quiet on the terraces because the club allowed supporters to go and sit in the stand at no additional cost. The stand was far busier than normal.

The low crowd I think was down to the weather (which bizarrely turned out brilliant once we kicked off) and the dour rugby recently. It’s shame we didn’t kick on from the Leeds game a bit more but I suppose the games have still been close. I enjoyed yesterday's game though, even despite the efforts of the bloke behind me that moaned non stop for 80mins.

Loss of JB and Ethan is a blow but neither was going to stay forever and we’ve had very good service out of them. On Irvine that’s a loss but the back office has been pretty poor since 2017 including while he was in it. Fact is with Chalmers in charge I think we’re pretty much stuck where we are. Whoever is covering the losses better keep doing it (Big Nige?) because Chalmers can’t.

What the club needs is some new blood in the marketing and office management setup. It appears we pay peanuts so might struggle to attract more capable people and so the same folk keep popping up or carrying on as they have for years.

If there was over 3k there yesterday then I’m Ernest Ward.

No you're not Ernest Ward - there was 2700 (ish) there - but they bull it up to save face!

Agreed. Our last few games of the season are all very winnable. So if we can keep within touching distance of the top 5, with the likes of Evans, Jy & Keyes back we could sneak in that top 5 and then anything could happen.

Unfortunately I couldn't go yesterday but I saw a highlight of DFJ's try (think it may have been his 2nd) where Ryan passes to Oakes onto DFJ. The centre play from Oakes is absolutely class. He barely touched the ball and provided an accurate pass for his wingman. It had to be bang on and that quick for of a pass for DFJ to score. Superb centre play.