Does anyone has the remaining fixtures for Fax, Batley, Fev to hand?

The run in might be worth a new thread tbh, give me a min.

Halifax - Swinton (a); Leigh (a); Featherstone (h); London (h)

Batley - Whitehaven (a); Featherstone (h); London (h); Swinton (a)

Featherstone - Workington (h); Batley (a); Halifax (a); Bradford (h).

heard it on radio leeds that the guy who was injured (sorry cant remember his name) suddenly appeared out of the ambulance, so hopefully not as serious as first thought.

Ben Heaton - Warrior

From what I can see in the comments it looks like the team just voted for Bullexit - from professional full time rugby.

At least getting a top 4 place is still in our own hands, but though some of the few occasions when the team has collectively raised their game this season have been against Leigh, still not easy to see us getting 2 points next week. Rather than being in the race for illusory promotion it feels more like we are in a relegation battle.

Is it? We're relying on Batley/Fax to slip up. And that's assuming we can actually string 4 wins together which doesn't seem all that likely even for the most optimistic of fans.

I was trying to be optimistic - which certainly isn't easy at the moment

We stuffed ourselves over months. Or, as some coaches and indeed fans had it, the early games aren't important, save your form for the 8s when it matters,



"We are bound to be in the top 4 so why bust a gut"



We screwed ourselves when some years back we barkingly decided that a team can do without a scrum half, and persisted with that insanity until in recent weeks - but years too late - the penny may finally have dropped. But don't worry, we are actively looking, so that's all right then.

If you build a ship without a rudder, you get a rudderless ship. This may be a surprise to some, but it is strangely true.

It was bad enough the Bulls trying this misguided philosophy of trying to get by without a leader, but seems they are now trying a similar experiment on the country

That was a truly woeful second half.

Addy should never kick a ball in play again - I keep whinging that we have no ability to put an attacking kick in anymore. How often does this team kick for a repeat set, or even put the opposition defensive line under some sort of pressure? I thought Charnock was doing an ok job at this for once the other week, and now Addy strolls back in the team and takes over the kicking duties, a job that is not within his rugby league skill set. To be honest at the moment, I'm not sure what is in his skill set other than missing tackles.

evenly matched packs but Halifax half backs and bradford half backs chalk and cheese

Agreed. I do not get the hate for the Bradford pack. I thought they won the collision quite often and got lots of quick play the balls, much quicker than us for most of the game. We probably just had that little bit of extra quality around the park compared to Bradford.

When people talk about the gulf between FT and PT it is more the gulf between SL and Championship which is evident but take yesterdays game with no disrespect to Bradford but it were just about the worst of the worst full time players against a lot of the very best part time players. A win for the FT time is in no way or form a given.

I thought their props made much more ground than ours and on defence we kept leaving huge gaps in our line which Fax exploited to the full. We didn't seem to be using a man for man marking or a sliding defence consequently we were all over the place.

I can't really remember our props taking the ball up in the second half. It was scoot after scoot after scoot from the wingers. Our defesively line speed completely fell to pieces.

Kirean Moss, Ethan Ryan and Jay Pitts are only ones who can hold their head high after that.

Yeah I thought the Bradford defence was very poor. We had a chance to take 2 in the first half and Bradford had been putting us under a lot of pressure but when we had the ball we were making half breaks so when we ran that penalty it was clear we were thinking we could bust through eventually.

I'd be interested to know what your assessment of our pressure is, though. Mine is that while we can get in opponents' 20, we are pretty easy for a determined and organised defence to repel. We seem to be lost for any ideas of how to score.

You're being a bit harsh on Deacs there FA. Shame on you.

Pretty much that you had a ton of ball in dangerous areas, admittedly a lot of that came more on the back of the lop sided penalty count rather than clean breaks, but even so Bradford did seem to have a lot more of the ball. Halifax's scrambling defence was superb though as was Bradford's to be fair. I think it was just a case for the majority of the game Fax's first line of defence was more solid than Bradford's as we seemed to be able to find gaps a lot easier.

Couldn't agree more with the last sentence. Our last tackle options particularly are dire, and have been for ages. The lack of craft is staggering, but that's what you get with no halfbacks. I would think the Halifax 6 & 7 would want to play us every week. We just stood and admired them run the show.

No, we would all like to play you every week.

The only rebuttal I can put up against your opinion of our squad is that Addy, Clark are going to HKR and Olbison, Gaskell (current championship player of year) and Ferguson are going to Huddersfield. So 2 SL teams think those 5 players are (bottom 4) SL quality. It is probably telling that 4 of them are injured at the moment.

Blythe is a quandary. He was a good centre at Wire 4 or 5 years ago, and started off as a good centre for us, but we played him for half a season as a 2nd rower, discovered he was no good at 2nd row, then put him back at centre and found that the stint at 2nd row seemed to have broken him at centre...

2 of our 17 had only been in the squad for 5minutes. But again, all their recent game time has been in SL.

As has been said many times, half back is our problem. No direction, no rudder, no creativity. Effort goes unrewarded so then the effort starts to slide, which annoys the fans.

Our recent signings do seem to be longer term. Middle 8's are no longer in our direct control, if it happens, we'll have a go, but this looks increasingly like building for the future.

Should I be concerned about Smiths final quote in the T&A today?

Smith added: “They are all big games now and until I’m no longer here I will treat every game the same.”

Why did he need to add the "no longer here bit"?!?

and that kind of emotional determination can't be turned on weekly. If I were a fax fan I think I'd be happy as it is.

You should see the celebrations when we score every week if you think those are just reserved for Bradford. Team spirit is and always has been very high in recent seasons at Fax. Anyway most people know our 'cup final' is against Leigh every season and has been for a while. Sorry about that.

Well, good luck to you mate, I certainly wish [iwe [/i showed that kind of enthusiasm every week.