Whilst it'll show us where we are, big game it isn't. Has absolutely no bearing on our season and honestly I'd rather get on with playing Dewsbury the week after.

Great result that today though, wouldn't have expected it in a million years. Thomas played well but thought Leon was the MOTM by quite some way. Thew out some lovely balls.

We are better than we had a right to expect, but still fragile and some soft defence and naive errors. We've used the loan system very well but Oledzki (for example) isn't our player and we won't have him all year. He was immense today, and on the back of that, the pack gave as good as it got and ended up well on top. On the other hand, Pryce is our man, and while he doesn't do that much, he does do the things that win games, like earning crucial penalties, and like the sweet pass that opened up Batley for what I think was the key score. Very please for Campbell, and Thomas, who have taken some stick, and is there anything Ethan can't do to score? Like a bleedin salmon today.

I hope the performance builds the confidence that you could see flooding through once the game was won, and they deserve the plaudits as there wasn't a poor performance today, if you don't count Smith's tactical kicking, which was gash. Well donez all.

Nah he only got a yellow.

Whilst Oscar won MOM, and he did play well, my MOM was Scott Moore by a mile. He was in at everything, running, tackling and passing. Will be missed if he goes down. Best game of season so far for Leon and our props ran very hard today.

I really hope Keyes missed out through injury and not just tactics, because Lee Smith at 7 did not work. At all. We won that game with only one halfback basically.
Also yet another game where we have an unused sub. Why put him on the bench if you aren't going to use him?

Having said that, I thought we won the forward battle today by some margin. We've actually managed to scramble together a pretty good set of front rowers now, all five of them who played today made good yards, although Kirk was probably the weakest of the bunch.
Campbell had a great game, and has probably played himself into the starting 17 with that performance.

Keyes is injured. Lee smith seems to be carrying a knock. That setup today had our 3 least injured pivots on the pitch.

Several strong candidates for MoM, Moore and Pryce did what they should be doing at this level. Pack played with plenty of energy and Roche was playing very well before the injury.

I'd go with Campbell - hungry for work came inside and took the ball in plenty of times, injected energy at vital times and showed great awareness for the intercept try.

If Thomas gets on Pryce's shoulder every week he'll score a lot of tries this year!

Quality of match report plumbs new depths.

Sorry to keep banging on about this, but the english language is a beautiful thing, and that guy's output causes me actual physical pain.

Has someone dragged Ray French out of retirement?

Not as bad as the player profile where someone posted on twitter for Oscars Thomas profile on the Bulls website, his position was marked down as Full Back/Half BLACK



Onto the game. I think Keyes was injured as he wasn't in the 19 man warm up. I thought we totally out smarted Batley and won that game with our brains. Pryce is getting better and better. Him & Moore picked the right passes at the right time. Superb

We actually look a more complete team than last year. We had plenty of dogs bodies and some talent but absolutely no one to steer the ship last year. Pryce and Moore are clearly guiding us around superbly. Campbell was outstanding and my M.O.M. He's cemented that right wing spot now. I agree with Northus. I am frustrated with us having an unused back on the bench every game. It will come to bite us in a tight game when we're tiring.

I have to say we are playing some of the best attacking rugby i've seen for a few years. When the ball gets out to the left, the moves, and passing between Thomas, Bentley, Oakes and Ryan are a joy to watch. Defence is still a bit wobbly and our discipline and errors are frustrating. Hopefully Smith can get up to fitness and replace Mendieka who isn't up to it IMO. No idea how he didn't score in the first half and his inability to draw a man in is frustrating.

Great 2 points to gain. Lets not love up against Dewsbury who will be fired up for us before returning to their weekly slump like every year.

Don't be sorry, it has the same effect on me. I don't mind them wanting to save money here and there, but I believe the club's website and social media outlets are a big indicator of a club's professionalism, and whoever is running ours is damaging that professional visage. But I suppose if they don't want to pay for someone to do it properly, maybe the money is being spent elsewhere. Regardless, I avoid reading them now.

The "typo" that Bull Mania mentioned was a particularly bad one though and spread around social media like wildfire last night until someone has since changed it. For the official website to have "half black" listed under a black player's profile could very easily offend someone in these days where offence is taken very quickly. Surely that's as good an example than any of needing someone to proof read rather than just using a spell checker.

Probably our most complete performance yet yesterday. I was impressed with how we contained Batley's forwards. Having three props on the bench was a great move. All the pack played well. Pryce had his best game yet and when he ran the ball Batley couldn't deal with him. He wound up a few in the opposition nicely too.

Ethan Ryan's finishing just gets batter. Oakes too is a real handful for the defence and it was great to see Campbell take his chance. He's got that wing sewn up now IMO.

The kicking game could have been better but with a makeshift halfback in Smith it was understandable. In the end it didn't matter.

Excellent game from us, marred only be some pretty naive defence particularly in the first half.

We toughed out a game in which we would probably have crumbled in times gone by and that was good to see. So many great tries, though, and whilst I don't think you could really quibble with Oscar getting MOM, I think there were half a dozen reasonable candidates, my own choice being a near call between Johnny Campbell (if he can play like that, how come he's figured so little over the last two years?) and Mikolaj Oledzki, (Leeds have an absolute diamond in that kid) and I give it to Campbell only because I thought his intercept try was probably the gamebreaker, which put the game out of reach for Batley.

Pity we don't yet have a bigger squad, as it would be nice to be able to keep most of the team out of the firing line against Fev in the cup and save them for Dewsbury in a fortnight. I think we should be approaching that game, if not quite like a cup final, at least as the important fixture it most certainly is.

I don't understand what's happened with Batley. I know they've lost John Kear and a few players - Keegan Hirst is a big loss - but they looked a shadow of the team we played last season.
They finished either 3rd of 4th last season so they will have received a decent wedge of central funding, they're still a part time team but I can't work out where any of that money has been spent?

Probably returned to the norm after an exceptional year last year. Under Kear they were fighting relegation most of the time and only just avoiding it on a couple of occasions.

Still doesn't explain where the money's gone.

Maybe they used it to support and strengthen their business rather than over paying players? (A lesson that a few clubs maybe could learn from... mentioning no names

)

Hirst turned out and scored for Dewsbury yesterday; assume he's on dual reg from Wakey?

Wouldn't mind us going in for him if he get's frustrated not getting a shot in SL.

Typical arrogant Batley thought they could just turn up and win against the team that finished a few places below them last year. Sorry Batley you're not a big club anymore and just turning up expecting to win against the team at the bottom of the table isn't going to win over the neutrals.

I read that one thing they'd invested in was their training/gym facilities, so they don't need to spend money on private gyms/premises anymore. A capital expenditure which increases infrastructure quality and reduces outgoings in the future. Whether that accounted for all of it, or they're keeping a "rainy day" fund, I'm not sure.

They run a tight ship at Batley. No way will they have spent it all.
They've had a lot of work done around the club, but most of it has been done by sponsors, which will has kept the cost down.
The lads that extended their contract after their outstanding season last year got a nice bonus built into their new deals and they have a bigger squad this year, but they certainly aren't the type of club that will throw all the extra money at the playing budget.

Not a bad showing from us in second half...
The first half defence was very poor, Mendieka's defence is not good enough, Smith in that centre with Campbell for me..
Keyes and Pryce 6 and 7...Oscar played well too, J.C would have been my MOM though.

Leon was my man of the match. He ran with the ball more and caused problems for Batley each time.

As much as it was a good result, lets hope we don't fall in love with ourselves after that, there wasn't much between the two teams until the last few minutes.
Too many errors early in the tackle count.
Too many penalties given away.
No idea with attacking kicks.
No patience near the opposition line.

Still plenty to work on.

Second half was enjoyable...we were poo in the first half, our defence was very very poor, handling errors were under 10's level.
although when we play with confidence we look good with the ball in hand, for me we need a couple more experienced heads..