3 missed kicks and we'd have been through

we were poor in attack and 6 kicking points lost not a good day

How we didn't attack their left edge again and again with Murrell a passenger in defence I'll never know - even my 13 year old could see that, and Kear was out coached by a novice today.

That was poor.

congrats to fax though ... i wont pain myself looking on their board about how they beat the 'Dulls at Odsalum' ... in essence, they beat a side (just) because they managed better knowing our attack offers nothing. The rest of the season i just hope we 'have a go' throw the ball around more, take risks, and (god forbid) have runners anticipating a line break or even an (insert dirty word) offload.

Overall, very underwhelming performance. Yes, those conversion misses came back to haunt us and cost us the game but we lacked creativity in the crucial areas. 2 of our scores were from Fax errors where as Halifax looked liked they could pull a score off whenever they wanted.

Hard to believe that’s the same team that played Leeds last month. Losing Milnes is a hammer blow as well. Bad day at the office.

Hopefully Keyes back to cover Milnes, move Ryan back to wing and bring brown into fullback, not been funny but Ryan more affective on the wing for mine

Two more years of watching performances like that from Lilley. Absolutely stank the joint out today. Terrible kicking game, terrible passing game, terrible running game and now we can add a crap defensive read which cost us the game to that list.

And then he actually gets shortlisted for the motm! You can't make it up.

This Bulls side is the most abject attacking side I have seen in a long, long time. We are abysmal. And now we've just lost the only half with any creativity to a broken leg.

cant agree more about Ryan, his gift is finishing. Keyes will be a godsend if fit with hopefully no recurrence/sorted back problem

Well, that was just about to be expected. Well done Halifax.
Having watched most Bulls matches live throughout the season so far, and enjoyed this level of rugby, I have to say that today was the low point for me.
From a strong attacking start to the season, we appear to have become one dimensional, and dare I utter the words "we need good experienced halves".
God help us that today was a measure of where we are for the remainder of the season, as nobody will fear us with our 5 drives / high bomb style of play.
Minchella looks a shadow of the player he was at the start of the season, and we really are missing Ryan on the wing. Lilley tries hard, but he's not putting pressure on with his kicking game. Other than Peltier, I think our forwards are needing a good long rest, as they look to be out-enthused too often.
Lets hope JK doesn't put too many of todays players into the Barrow match, as we just might get turned over there too.

Poor stuff today. Kicking game was woeful and I can barely remember any good end of set plays. Can't argue with the result, Halifax played the better rugby.

I think this is a particularly harsh take. If it was true about Fax , then the scoreline would have been bigger than it was.

Close to the line generally (IMO) Fax never troubled our defence too much especially in the first half. They had to rely on some good play on the break further out but it was hardly scoring at will.

Our failure to capitalise when they had one in the bin ultimately cost us IMO even that early in the game.

Hard to disagree with the end result for sure, however had we nicked it at the end it would have been a total injustice either.

I'm not mad, just a bit disappointed!

Give it a rest Northus. If you're blaming Lilley for the defeat. How about the captains appalling read in defence yet again. Ryan was anonymous today. FB is almost as crucial as your HB in attack. If you think that's this is the most abysmal side you've seen you can't have been watching us long. Are we dull, yes. But we've made a quarter final, beaten Leeds and are a couple of points of the play-offs in our first year back. We're A frustrating side right now though and need to be better.

Our defence, particuarly around the middle is the biggest worry right now. How many times have Fax scored that type of try against us! Crossley again the culprit. Things need freshening up.

Well done Fax.

I'd expect to see the following play at Barrow on Wednesday:

Roche
Pickersgill
Ricketts
Stephenson
Gibson
Bustin
Milton
Hodgson
O'Sullivan

yup agreed and Milnes is costly loss for us, an extra game we could have done without. The start of the game we had one half and basically, we have been relying on the only true half, a 19 year old. do we have academy/u16 that could fill the roll now? a pun of course but i hope Keyes pulls through. We had a huge squad with 4 halves at the start and cruel luck has us at zero? still dont see lilley as a half.


I'll stop saying 'half' now as my chinese beers need topping up lol

This is complete nonsense. Are you seriously suggesting that the publicity and media exposure gained from reaching the semi finals means nothing to a club, especially a Championship club. It's that sort of exposure that increase sponsorship and commercial interest. Nott to mention the obvious ticket sales and some extra merchandise sales.

He likes to moan!

Why should I give it a rest? Do you think Lilley played well?
I've been watching Bradford for decades and yes this team is up there.

For what it's worth I don't think Ryan should be playing fullback, but that's just another baffling decision by Kear. At least we've signed Brown so it looks like they're trying to rectify the situation.

Lilley s fine as an organising half back, he needs someone alongside him who can produce something on attack. Anyone know anyone?

You need stock in your shop for there to be merchandise sales



Nah you're right, but it's over now anyway.

Well,so much for the Cup. I’m glad we don’t have the distraction of a shellacking by Saints. Although it grates to lose at home to Fax, beating Leeds was great, and some much needed brass in the bank.

But the serious injury I feared from games we don’t need is a blow.

The problem is that while we have resilience in defence, and a good attitude, we are a frighteningly one-dimensional style of play with ball in hand, and it’s not difficult to counter. We can’t come up with any last tackle plays to put the pressure on (the perennial punt in the air is as predictable as Monday mornings), and we must never hunt in fast packs with the threat of offloads, instead it’s one man plunge after plunge.

Too easy to defend.

Our main players are all off the boil but then we insist on playing players like Ryan and Minchella out of position, so maybe that’s a factor.

I actually enjoyed the game in some res, a to and fro cup tie, which could have gone either way, but was also frustrated at our failings which are not new. I fear we have been rumbled.

As the saying goes 'at least we can concentrate on the league' (assuming we play a shadow squad against Barrow and lose on Wednesday)

Although you can correctly say that we could have won, or at least forced golden point, with better goal kicking, the truth is that two of our tries came directly from mistakes by them. They were still valid tries, but you can hardly say that we created them through good play. Only the Milnes try was actually 'made' by good play.

And there is the problem with our team right now, we simply don't look like creating tries. Somehow we've got to do more than wait for errors, get lucky on the end of a kick, or a scoot from dummy half. We must be the easiest team in the Championship to defend against!

kear has said that nobody who played today will feature Wednesday.

I think looking at the bigger picture we are all a bit guilty of expecting too much from this squad. We are still a work in progress. We've come up against a solid established Championship club and just fallen short of getting the result from missed conversions. Yes the performance was poor for large spells but i don't expect Halifax will be thrilled with their performance either but they got a result which is all that counts.
We need to strengthen some areas but it won't happen overnight without a lot of money being thrown at it. Still feel we lack a bit of a talisman who can really take the game by the scruff of the neck. I guess those players aren't readily available but you just knew Murrell would likely edge things into Fax favour.

The season really is dead we look like we are safe from relegation and no chance of promotion so why don't we change tack and start attempting to take risks, instead of this conservative style of play. If not, all the good work done with the cup run Will be forgotten and the crowds will tail off watching this style of rugby. I think JK has done a great job up to now, but I feel he has to change the style of play and can now experiment a little.

I honestly think we never really recovered from the Joe Keyes thing. He played all our friendly matches (or most of them) and was looking in good form. I'm sure he was going to be the focal point of our whole attacking structure. So to lose him for the whole season to date obviously rocked our preparations.
We then have the Pickersgill situation. Given a full time deal during the off season, for whatever reason things have turned sour. I don't agree with JK's decision to just drop the kid and never play him again but combined with McNally's departure it left us with a key position empty. Kear is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by playing Ryan there imo - it's not working.
There is then also the situation with Chisholm. Not exactly sure what went on but he's gone now. Was this Kear's plan at the start of the season? I really don't believe it was.

Add in other factors like the long term injuries to Evans, Hitchcox and Peltier and the mitigating factors are starting to accumulate.

I might be wrong with all of the above but this is how I'm trying to justify our current performances in my mind. There has to be something behind why we're playing so poorly, I refuse to believe this is how JK wants us to play. I don't mind us doing the basics but performances like today's go way beyond that.

Hopefully we can just get our heads down and try and finish the last part of the season strongly now. Top 5 would be a bonus but I have a feeling we might just fall short. I can see us finishing 6th or 7th. To be fair, after getting promoted from League 1 last season I'd take that and hope to build on it in 2020.

The cup run and the derby against Leeds will have definitely helped in terms of finances and budgets/cashflow, so that is at least one positive to draw from this season already.