Steve Parry is the only one I know from the above.Hes a lively sort who has scored plenty of tries with various semi pro welsh clubs(Ironmen,Scorpions etc) and also Glos All golds where he picked up a couple of Player of season awards as well.Saw him play for Wales in all there World Cup Games was one of the few pluses.JK will know all about him havin been his coach.

I suspect, for the obvious reasons, that JK is pretty well fully versed in the abilities of all Welsh players!

Bateman & Parry are the only ones I really recognise. Both have played International for Wales, and in key positions, you'd assume those are the danger men. As has been rightly said though, if any coach other than Phil Carleton is going to know those players well, it'll be John Kear.

We have our own team Dr. We are only obliged to provide a Dr at home games (for both teams) but the club has decided to continue to take a Dr to away games to look after our players.
The emergency drugs are checked by the match commissioner before every match so ours have been checked already. Systems are in place to ensure this doesn’t happen to us.

Job done. In the hat for the next round.

Good to see us bully a team up the middle. Fantastic platform set by the pack today. Obviously it won't be that easy this year but it was great to see the team really put the Raiders to the sword. We put together some great attacking play on the break.

Only negative point was the very soft Raiders try that we conceded in the second half. Credit goes to the Raiders water carrier. He did some serious metres today.

The only negative today was the 50p a try it cost me. It's normally a quid but cup games are 50p till quarter final

That's Ok as long as the other side of the deal is his board money doubles every time he doesn't score and £10 from him for every tackle he misses.

Well I'm hoping his board money doubles,but hoping I don't find out if you know what I mean

On a serious note, it was mentioned to me a few times during the game Elliot could break the try scoring record held by Big Les for most tries in a game, a think a couple of times he could of easily received the last pass to make it 7 tries. When I mentioned this to him after the game he said he was glad he didn't, he said Les's record shouldn't be cheapened in the Challenge Cup against a poor team. Which I thought was nice

I had a flash back to big les when Elliott scored his 5th !!

There's not much to say about the (mis)match in truth, is there. Eliot's five must be the highlight and MOM winner, though I confess my personal Moment Of the Match was big Steve Crossley's sidestep as he cut inside the fullback to score behind the sticks in front of the Southbank. Given the mismatch in size he [icould[/i have just barged him out of the way, but the sidestep was really classy!

Some observations:

I thought we looked like we had more idea in attack - albeit against very poor opposition. Pickersgill and Keyes combined very well and McNally came up well from the back. We don't need any more halfback cover now Chisholm is back since Pickersgill is an able deputy.

I thought Halafihi had a good game and made tons of yards from dummy half. More than Hallas who I think is better suited to loose forward.

Callum Bustin looked the part. I think Kirk will have to work hard to get his place back.

Minchella looked a class apart.

Not much to disagree with really, agree Hallas has the skills for the job though, for me, Eliot Minchella is our best 13 by a country mile. Obviously JK has to fit in players to get the best overall team so maybe that's his reasoning for not playing him there (I guess no.12 should be a clue..). Watching the game again this afternoon I thought Vila had maybe his best game for the club. As I said earlier, it's hard to say just what we achieved in a game like this but, it's good to know we are capable of putting poor sides to the sword - which is probably the main thing we learned yesterday afternoon.

If I had to find one negative about our performance yesterday, I think it would probably be the (lack of) service that our wingers got.
Dalton Grant barely got a sniff yesterday because Gibson either just put his head down and went himself or just ran a line that effectively used up all of Grant's space.
Ryan didn't get any space to run in because he's outside Lee Smith. Hopefully Oakes isn't too far away and Kear actually has the balls to drop the captain.
I'm not convinced about Mikey Wood either. Did big minutes yesterday but failed to make an impression, while our other three props were making breaks for fun.

It's nice that we have options this year

I think Elliots best position is 13. He likes to get his hands on the ball a lot and I think that's how he most effective to the team, obviously we are not reading too much into yesterday. Backing up, anticipating a break and putting himself in a position to finish things off is something which I think he does ok. If he plays the majority of games at 12 he will me more than happy and crack on and give 100%

Bustin eased my slight worries about our depth in the prop department. He is a unit and it looked like the opposition struggled with him everytime he had the ball. Crossley, Peltier and Bustin are the three main props for me with Kirk, Wood and Davies fighting it out for the fourth spot/providing cover for injuries.

Agree about how fluent we looked in attack. This team has a lot of points in it and I think we are going to enjoy this season. Kear just needs to ensure he keeps them grounded for the more difficult games like York, Keighley etc. There is a big disparity between the top and lower half teams in this league.

Minchella looks like he is going to be the Bentley of the team when it comes to try scoring. Brilliant signing.

For me the only negative was switching off for their try!

Did they really switch off?? We tried to have 3 quick penalties and the ref said no, they had 1 right on our line and he let it go.

And seemed to get in the way of the defenders!

He was stood completely in the way. But apart from that howler he had an ok game.

The biggest shame is that when we booed the ref for his decision, it came across as if were booing West Wales, when nothing could be further from the truth. I don't begrudge them their try for a second, much as I disagree with the referee's decision.

Yes I agree and I hope our Welsh friends don't think we were booing their team efforts.

Given that most folk stayed to applaud them off I don't think they were too upset.

Got to admit I was very pleased West Wales didn@t resort to grubby tactics ala Keighley even when down by a big score. Played some good rugby at times but our defence was a class apart. Agree with everything said about the likes of Hallas, Halafihi and Minchella. And really class from Minchella to say that about not cheapening Les' record even though I was a litte excited he could have broke it! Great performance all in all. McNally did look like he was running in treacle though



Gre