Why did we lose?

Well, the first point is that nobody in the bulls squad seemed to have noticed that there was a howling gale down the pitch from the Rolley end. Widnes regularly killed us with it all second half long.

The second point is what passes for our goal-line "defence", especially (but by no measn exclusively) in the area formerly known as Walker. You know that your defence is shiitt when you get a third of a century put past you at home by a team like Widnes, but the depressing thing is that, as so many times in recent seasons, you just KNOW that once the opposition is in our 20, they WILL score, and you just KNOW that they will basically WALK in, unchallenged.

Finally you just know that a couple of times at least the Bulls will be in pole position attacking the opponents' line, when they will gift long range scores. Those two pathetic attempts at last-play kicks would be risible by a 9 year old, but then to see Paddy have time to take the ball with nobody near him, get into gear, and stroll unchallenged for a hundred yards was really taking the mick.

Desperate times. Don't ask me how to fix it, there was probably much fine play to be admired by the Bulls but it counts for absolutely nothing when they lace it with so many pieces of dross. But if there was a place to start, it would be in trying to work out why our goal line defence looks like we have 3 men defending a line a mile long. Nothing new at all, sadly, but absolutely shocking nonetheless.

As I keep saying,guile at halfback and pace somewhere in the team FFS.

Widnes had Brown commanding the middle from half back and was different class and the speed of Hanbury from full-back.Widnes have pace and guile,something the BULLS need if they are gonna compete.Many players in that team are just not good enough.They have to stop kidding themselves.
Widnes are not a bad side though,far from it.

Let's see who they get rid of and who they bring in for next season.

Jeez,the sages on here can't even blame Elliot for thisicon_smile.gif

Glad I didn't go,season over before end of June

Christ. That has to be THE worst game of the season. With respect to Widnes, we should not lose a game like that from 18-4 up. Pathetic.
Wtf was Gale doing on those "kicks" to the corner. And I'm sorry, Paddy is no speedster is he, yet not one of our cart horses could catch him. Absolutely dire.

Still at least the season is over now, and I can stop giving a sh11t, and maybe enjoy watching some decent rugby from whichever team is next up to beat us.

We looked absolutely knackered with about 20 minutes still to go. Why? We've just had a two week break, if anyone was feeling tired it should have been Widnes after their game on Monday.

I'm starting to think that FC isn't going to cut it as a SL coach. The same goes for LSH but that's been obvious for years. Our sliding defence in general, our individual defensive reads and our overall composure under pressure just aren't good enough, and those things are all down to the coaching.

But this is all we have now, there's no way FC will be replaced because the funds just aren't there. We're set to lose a few more players from this already threadbare squad - plus the return of the loan players - and so far the only person we have been linked with is Carvell.
I honestly have no idea who FC is going to bring in, I have seen the list of ooc players and there really isn't anyone there that will improve us.

Next season will be an almost identical repeat of this one I feel, god knows how they are going to push season ticket sales with performances like the one we have just seen, FC already confirming there will be no marquee signings and some of our best talent leaving at the end of the season.

Completely and utterly depressed about every facet of the club right now. It just feels like practically every other single club in the league are making strides forward - both on and off the pitch - and we are just constantly backpedalling.

Oh yeah, and lets not forget that one of those teams played on Monday night, and one has had two weeks off. You would not think it to look at them would you?

Awful. I just knew Widnes were going to nick it as soon as we kept letting them back in the game. Most teams would have killed the game before half time.

Addy can go. Saw nothing from him today that made me want to keep him.

Gale did some ok stuff, but as soon as the game started getting away from us, he was no where to be seen. When he did pop up he gave Widnes a lifeline. 14 mins left all we needed was to put the ball on the floor. Oh no Gale puts a high kick in and Ah Van goes full length. His game management is shocking.

The fact Ah Van can go full length with the nearest player to him Scruton shows how badly we need Ainscough. We are badly lacking speed.

Kearney, i think its about time we move him from full back. Coming up with too many howlers. How slow was he to get to Browns kick before been smashed into touch. He should have been much deeper. His position is
Poor. Id move him to 6.

Positives: Donaldson, Blythe, Bateman and Sidlow.

The rest can hang their heads in shame. Losing a must win game to a team in 10th, AT HOME, when they played last week and we had a week off. Unacceptable.

Today we watched Widnes score over and over from the same set move down their left side. The whole crowd could see them setting it, but we had no answer for it.
When Paddy went full length and our faster player was Scruton, you know how much pace where lacking.

Some good positives from the first half, and the platt try. But sadly cancelled out and forgotten by the end.

Wrose than our season effectively being over, is looking towards next year.
With the number of rumoured outs, and returning of loan players. How are we going to field a team.
Blythe & Evans - returned
Lulia - going home
Whitehead - Gone
Diskin - retire? Over the hill, Do we want him?
Langley, Addy, Donaldson - rumours flying about.
Kearney - who knows

Looking at the list of other OOC players, there's not much. If Wakefield or whoever is offering Addy more, maybe that's because they no the isn't much else out there.
One positive, don't think we'll be worried about the cap lol.

Nothus,

agree 100%.I'll tell you what though,when you have no CASH,the thing you don't do,IMO,is put in place is a rooky coach with little experience,you need someone with experience, who can inspire a threadbare squad and from what I have seen so far FC doesn't have it coz he hasn't got the experience,simple as that.Its not rocket science is it and that is why I have always questioned the longevity of the present management right from the start.How the fooook are they gonna keep,never mind increase crowds for next season???We'll do well to win another game as every other SL team has more pace/guile than us,simple as that.

Oh and another thing I forgot. 12 points up, quarter of an hour left, penalty awarded right in front of the sticks. Why the FOOK did we not take the 2? I was going mental.

HEAR HEAR to the post last but one! We still have some half decent players and you can go a long way with that as long as you have an experienced and dynamic coaching team. Please, please, please Mr K - learn from history; if we keep going down we'll lose crowds, thus lose money, thus be in a worse position than ever, A dedicated, experienced coaching team is what we need,

Extremely disappointing performance and another game that we basically threw away with schoolboy plays. Experienced senior players lumbering about and falling off fairly basic tackles, just not good enough.

I don't care what anybody says, there just isn't the same team spirit and will to work for each other that we saw at the beginning of the season. The body language wasn't great and there was players bickering and pointing at each other. Very worrying, especially with games against Wire and Wigan up next..

We didn't play conditions as well as widnes did. Made it very difficult to reach playoffs now, basically were dependent on KR slipping up against one of lower teams and us getting a surprise win.

He didn't give the penalty for that he gave it for pulling back on Ah Van.

Why did FC take donno off by far and away our best tackler, NAS comes on and he and sidlow get steam rolled by the Widnes prop, one very good tries scored by us but defense wins game and if we can't defend we can't possibly hope of winning.

How can we be so tired ith 20 mins to go questions have to he asked of the staff and player conditioning, Widnes where well up for that game and when we got to 28 we seemed to just think "yeah we're happy with that, let's not push ourselves", no one can argue our previous losses are down to tiredness it seems the heart has been ripped from the team and they just cant be bothered anymore, 2 weeks off and thats the best we can do pathetic, wolves and wigan will trip us to shreds in these next 2 weeks.

Wind advantage and we didnt use it once, dosey defending and lackluster play we'veo seen it all before and im sick of it now.

Ok red i dint notice that, stand corrected.

Did well to score all those points with no half backs playing.

Right side defence was terrible, why did FC take Blythe off and leave Purtell there, he had a shocker. Gale is not performing at all. Kearney made some bad mistakes for a good player. Can`t understand why Bateman has to take the ball in as first receiver, surely thats not part of the plan.Widnes used the wind in the second half to good effect with tactical kicking, and we let Kevin Brown do what he wanted by not pressuring him.
Next week will be harder but I will still be there COYB

Why was Langley dropped?

Not dropped but the usual crocked.

Can see yet another high turnover of players for next season

I reckon about 6 of first team 22(ish) not here next season plus Elliott already gone

Gonna need 2 or 3 more players than this season

So 8 or 9 new players needed from somewhere

Because we are e.

Next?

Very disappointing today we shouldn't have let them back in when we went 3 scores ahead. Lack of structure, dumb plays but the moment that sticks in my mind is Scruts and Diskin strolling back so slowly they actually managed to get in the way of their team mates trying to run the bsll out!

stood with the bulls fans today you really should chill out we are not that bad of a side we score a few points but just have a few brain farts every now and then a bit like the bulls you have a young coach and you need to back him a bit like we did last year with betts good game today and good luck for the rest of the year

A very disappointing afternoon in the end

There were points when we really had things under control and if we'd managed to kick on and score maybe one more try then we'd have been comfortable. But somehow there was always that feeling - whether at 18-4 or 28-16, that Widnes could - and might very well - come back.

The main reason for our loss was our non-existent right side defence. Every time the ball came out from Brown to Hock or Hanbury down that side you felt a try coming. Blythe looked all at sea in the defensive line. Kear - too small and slow. Purtell - sorry to say this after all he's been through - but he doesn't look up to the job.

Chronic lack of pace as others have said Ah Van, as we know, must be one of the slowest wingers in SL, but he left our lot for dead. When the only guy to even get close is Nick Scruton, then that says all we need to know about our lack of pace.

Really, apart from the efforts of Bateman, Scruton and Blythe (with ball in hand) - and Platts quality dummy for the try - there was precious little to be pleased about.

Where do you begin?

Really really disappointing performance. How did we lose after getting in a winning position twice?

We seem to be able to defend really well unless we're in our own 20m area and then we look hopeless, particularly down the right side. After the first 30mins we allow Widnes into our half for the first time and immediately concede a try a 4 year old could've seen coming. Our last 30mins should be shown as a masterclass in doing everything wrong.

What was FC thinking bringing off Blythe and Donaldson when he did? They'd both been amongst our better defenders and certainly looked more up to speed than the less than fit Manoakafoa or defensively dodgy Olbison.

That second half was awful. The crap set of six and awful kick from Gale to Ah Van and also that set when we chose not to go for goal but then ran it but with no clue as to what we were trying to achieve. It was total headless chicken rugby. Then Addy tries a ball steal under the nose of the ref and Lulia offloads to nobody. Argh! Stupid!

On the positive side I thought our fist 30mins was great albeit we could've been further ahead with a bit of patience. Sidlow and Scruton looked good and even tubby Diskin caused some problems. Donaldson and Blythe looked hungry too. Trouble was when Evans, Manoakafoa, L'Estrange and Olbison were on the field we were half the side.

Widnes showed how to be patient. They kept plugging away and stuck to a great game plan inthe 2nd half using a strong wind to pin us back. We'd do well to follow that example.