Who really knows about the try decisions, but the main point was your two props. They were the only Saints players who could compete with an on form Bulls side. Unfortunately, they didn't just compete they demolished the Bulls. It was like rolling back the clock to when the Bulls used to win with power - today we must have the smallest pack in the league, whilst at Saints you seem to have about 7 props in your team, and two of them just enormous. The retirement of Joe V and Les V before that are the missing part of the Bulls right now.

Indirectly. Yes it did.
I think it damaged your sides momentum and self belief, that was present up till that point. Saints would have almost certainly conceded a try as i doubt we would have been able to hold out for a fifth set of six on our own line. We would then have been 18-4 down. The Bulls would have been rampant. Saints would have had to force play to get in the game, thereby creating errors, and more opportunities for the bulls to score.

As it was at 14-4 down Saints knew that 1 try would bring us right back in it.

At times today the Bulls looked like a top class outfit, you were tough in defence, fast and moved the ball around well.

According to the Saints players, the ball was stolen by one of the Bradford players as Roby went over, as the rules stated if it is stolen in the act of scoring it is a penalty try, that is what the IGJ said.He was only three feet away from it. You seem to only mention Kyle badly timed tackle, but, forget to mention the swinging of that thug Newton, followed by the Halley shot on Maurie. Amazingly, Thaler did not do anything, because, Maurie did not do a swan dive and rollover pretending to be injured, he got up and played the ball.

Yet again the referee costs us the game

Yet again you talk complete spheroids!

From where I watched it there were two significant moments in the game:

1) When Fa'asavalu came on in the first half and ripped us to shreds.

2) When he came back on in the second half and did exactly the same.

I don't agree. It is far from certain we would have scored. Knowing us we would have knocked it on. And even with the extra 2-4 points the game would hardly have been out of reach. So was that decision alone the reason we lost? Absolutely not.

I thought McNamara had made the wrong call, but then I remembered Paul Medley's speech, and realised it was the right decision.

Listening from afar, it seemed to remind me very much of Wigans tactics in the mid 90's when in a similar situation. Be continually off side, throw in the odd high tackle, allways early on in the tackle count. No sin bins were ever issued then and when the attacking team knocked on, a scrum given regardless of how much off side Wigan were at that time. As something similar seemed to be occuring today, was MacNamara anticipating the knock on/scrum event and decided 2 was better than none?

how the hell do you know? you couldnt be bothered attending - wally!

Poor old Mick he really does you lot no favours.

According to Radio Leeds you were going well at 14-4 when you had that"try" disallowed.
twenty minutes later you are in trouble 28-14 down instead of 20-4 up.
Did you drop off the pace or did Saints move up a gear?
Should be a good game this Friday.

A bit of both.

He ripped the ball out of Menzies' hands twice in as many minutes.

I assume you are a "comedy" poster. Very good.

Right then, lets have a bash at this one.

The one thing that was the key factor was Fa'asavalu's (I'm not even going to attempt to spell his name correctly, that'll do) spells, which turned the game to a certain extent. He was magnificent, a joy to watch even from a Bulls perspective!

However, I think the Bulls had a couple of good chances to put that game to bed. I certainly didn't agree with taking the 2, we had all the momentum and Saints were on the back foot. Also, Deacon's "try", of which I'm not sure why it was disallowed (haven't read the previous posts on here), but that could have certainly done some damage psychologically to be that far in front.

Saints had two very good spells, and justified for me why they're the best team in the comp. I personally aren't too downhearted from that, and look forward to Leeds on Friday. Kudos to Scruton, who had his best game for the Bulls I thought. Non-Kudos to Deacon, who again looked lost, and justified our need to sign Wing, or any other 7 that looks capable of leading a line and backing up the work our ever consistent players like Lynch and Menzies do week in, week out.

Keep the faith!

P.S - Eastwood's much criticized hit on Jeffries was perfectly legal in my opinion

Firstly the bradford no try, what i assumed was the decision is that whoever competed with wellens was the one who got the first touch, it went forwards and hence was a knock on ... whether this was the case i dont know

As for roby's try, it was directly in front of me, and he definately a try, the ball was bounced after it was put down which was why it looked like it was a knock on i suppose

The in goal touch judge's were far closer than me on both occasions so i suppose ill have to trust in there decision ... the fact they both came up for saints



Im with Aaronbull in that i thought eastmond came over the shoulder, may of ended up around the neck and a penalty, but not the henious crime some bradford fans seem to paint out

I cant really think of any real incidents where the referee got it particularly wrong, but i think the bradford fans should be asking themselves questions such as "why with 4 sets on the saints line we could only come away with 2 points?" and "Why a team missing there number 7 (who is as influential as saun long (love him or hate him)) can still come to odsal and score 8 tries?"

I also thought deacon played really well for you guys especially in the first 20 of each half, along with menzies who was running rings around us at one point

More interested in asking why a team can be continually pulled for high tackles and no further action taken. It's much easier to defend when you know you can get away with murder.

both teams got away with a few cheeky shots ... it happens in rugby, its not tiddly winks!

without being derogatory to bradford (i still thought you played well!) the space was there, you failed to exploit it - that has nothing to do with what the opposition were or werent doing

Seems to me some on here have benn infected with lets-blame-the-ref-itis and im probably not going to be able to change your mind

Basically I think we lost this because we lack any impact off the bench whereas Saints had tons of it. We did well for the first 25 mins but when Puletua, Faasavalu and Roby came on Saints grabbed the momentum and went from being behind to getting three tries before half time.

When those players went off we managed to get a grip again but when they returned for a second spell the scoreline blew out again.

We had no answer to the Saints go-forward at all, it was like watching the Bulls of old with the Saints playing the biff-ball power-game thanks to some big kiwis up the middle.

Our bench, though willing enough didn't have the same "impact".

We also seemed to get our tackling technique wrong versus the big kiwi lads, everyone went upstairs and got bumped off, someone needs to go low too.

Our brainless errors didn't help and we got punished everytime. Burgess and Menzies runs into touch were totally needless and you could see the danger well in advance. Langley ought to be shot for that stupid pass on the 20m line to nobody.

Now that's daft. I agree we did some high shots (though I find it hard to imagine someone of Eastmond's height could do a high shot to your bloke, though I suppose it's possible). We deserved the penalties against us that we were given. In fact, although almost every Saints fan around was worried about our discipline (ball and behaviour) under Potter (given his rep with Catalans), I was somewhat ashamed by our discipline at Odsal on Sunday (both ball and behaviour). I thought we were cr@p in the discipline department and I was waiting for a yellow, especially when I saw Cunningham called over following Eastmond's tackle. Had we been given a yellow, we would have deserved it. I hope Potter decides to take action but I'm not holding my breath since he isn't Daniel Anderson (unfortunately) and doesn't take that same honest approach to the game.

But besides the very real disciplinary problem we clearly had on Sunday, where I think Bradford and Saints differed was that our scrambling/goal line defence was better than yours and your guys were knackered towards the end of each half, hence our purple patches at the end of each half. Fas did his job very well, I thought, as did Tony P (unlike James, who played rubbish on Sunday, which is rare for him), and they along with Bryn and Paul Clough (fab season he is having) wore your forwards down.

Had Bradford been able to hold their line at the back end of each half then the score would have been a lot closer and could have gone either way. We both played total tosh for the first 20 of the second half. I've rarely seen such awful rugby in a Superleague game! But other than that I think we both undermined each other in different ways but we had the advantage of your guys tiring first and our scrambling/goal line defence being that bit better.

That was my first ever visit to Odsal and I really enjoyed the day. I had a great pre-match chat with a couple of Bulls fans in a local pub and I thought a lot of effort was put into the pre-match and half time entertainment. What a shoddy job we do by comparison! God, it was embarrassing to think of!! But I think Odsal is a great place; pity it couldn't be improved as is (like a roof on the terracing) rather than rebuilt in the way that is being planned as it's unique and has a real atmosphere. Still, I haven't had to sit/stand there in the pouring rain! So what do I know!

I thought we lost because they have better players than us.

It must have been a right hit from Sydney.

Don't be ridiculous... some of our players are as good as theirs, some are nearly as good and some aren't anywhere near as good