NEVER easy at Batley, we (Leigh) should know !

IMHO I think the signing of GH will be an excellent signing. I also don't think that nobody else wanted him. Time will surely tell. But i think Leigh have got him at the right time, and with the family culture at Leigh, it will do him a world of good and bring the best out of him, and he will prove what a world class player he his.

No trouble last season.

Got out of jail with that one

I suppose, trying to find something positive to say, we found a way to win when it looked for all money that we were staring down the barrel of defeat. And its not so long ago that you wouldn't have thought we would have the mental strength to that.

Having said that, there were some worrying aspects. Siejka was very poor today. He offered nothing, literally nothing, on attack and completely failed to dominate the game like you need from a scrum half. We need more of a plan than relying on a bit of magic from Gaskell, because when he gets shut down like he was for large parts of today, we don't look like creating anything.

Bringing back Siejka and putting Mullaney back to full back made us look a LOT less potent than last week.

And why, when we had three props on the bench, did Sidlow play for so long? Anyone notice that Fleming, who had only been on the field about five minutes, got taken off after he let Batley score a soft try. And Lauaki only did about 10 minutes again. We can't keep flogging Sidlow and Clough or they'll be knackered by the time it gets to the business end of the season.

Fair play to Batley, they played really well and will probably feel they've had their pocket picked today

Today's crowd 2223. What a fiddle. At least double that. 3500 Bulls there. On todays game,we got lucky. Referee was appalling in second half. Our attacking play was too slow. Batley treated it like a cup tie, we took the game too easily. We woke up just in time.

Only thing I can think it's either a fiddle or they haven't counted the tickets the bulls had the print themselves yet. I'm sure there chairman will want to get it into the press

Referee Stokes is the worst ref in the business. We had him at Leigh v Broncos and i swear i will not attend a another game when he is in charge.

Lowes said on the radio that he took off the players he believed were cuplable for their "soft tries".

I wonder how much we have paid Lauaki per minute played so far?

Shaw deserves huge credit for nailing that conversion. I very much doubt we would have got the subsequent try if that hadn't gone over.

You would have thought we had beaten Leeds at the end. Very entertaining, if not always high on quality, and a terrific effort by Batley.

Well, getting the win was a relief. I think that the better team lost today. It does show we can still get a result when we play badly. We will be better with Purtell and Baille in the centres and I think Davis will be huge for us when he's fit. I really think that the player we need back is Addy. At the moment everything goes through Gaskell, Addy can offer short passes and has a kicking game to add to Gaskell. As a previous poster mentione Siejka is a waste of a shirt. I was on the terrace end we were playing to in the first half and he was clueless with the ball. He either shipped it straight to Gaskell or drove it in. He adds nothing and it means Mullaney wasn't up there in the thick of it. Mullaney, Gaskell and Addy will offer real quality options I think. On a positive note I thought Jay Pitts played well and was one of our best forwards. He plays way above his weight. I would not like to be in the changing room with Lowes though.

You sound just like a Wigan/Salford/Widnes fan

And Leigh.

Let's give Siejka a chance before we make him chief scapegoat when Walker is out. He's only just gone 23 so he's still fairly inexperienced and will still be finding his feet within our setup. If he going to be the key player who will lead us back into SL? Probably not but with time he might well strike up a complimentary partnership alongside Gaskell.

While ever Henry is his ran him out of room each time.

Henry and Ulugia looked they'd never met each other before

Did get out of jail, I think Batley were up for the job and on balance were the better side on the day as someone said earlier, a typical John Kear coached side. Played it simple, not many mistakes and defended as it their life depended on it. Their pack never took a backward step and the three quarters worked well inside to support them so we never managed to dominate up front.

We did look out of ideas for much of the second half but maybe that was credit to Batley.

Its still early doors though, no trophies handed out at this time of the year.

Bad day at office. Thought we were guilty of trying to score with every play in first half. Showed composure we would have lacked last year to grind out win. Hopefully a few players back over next couple of weeks plus Fleming and lauaki getting match fitness will settle things down. Bit early to judge sjelka IMO. Needs a few more games to gel with Gaskell.

We more than matched the much lauded Bulls today, and as many Bulls supporters said, we lost the game rather than the Bulls winning it. We have to be proud of our Club, and the way we conduct ourselves on and off the field. Much hard work went into today, and raps to the Bulls supporters who turned out in numbers to play their part in creating a fully charged atmosphere for a gripping no - nonsense toe to toe game of rugby league.

Batley Bulldogs, we are proud of you!

I think Sjieka and Gaskill need a bit more game time together, the latter's suspension hasn't helped them gel as a partnership. Although not yet providing much in attack, I thought Sjieka defended well.

The ref, I feel, can be rightly lambasted today for the questionable way he policed the ruck and for missing 2 blatant crossing incidents one of which lead to a try.

As others have said, we got out of jail today and a lot of that was down to composure. The players need to understand that they don't need to score on every play. It is alright just to put in 5 drives and a kick on some sets.

But the fact is we played poorly and still got the 2 points. We have players to return from injury or rotate back into the side and still another 19 games to play before the middle 8s kick off

didn't say EVERY single season.....

Neither did I.

It is no co-incidence that Siejka was back and we looked a much worse side. Maybe he can rapidly improve and become worth having but so far in the few games he has played, for mine he has wavered somewhere between anonymous to liability. If he can play, then we haven't seen any of it yet. If in future he proves he can play then the question would be why he is poor at the moment. I would agree that he defended ok today but his defence isn't the main reason he is on the pitch. I have faith in Jimmy and so assume he must have seen something in Siejka that I haven't.

Overall, can't blame everything on him, we looked pretty disjointed at times and do try to force the game too much, Batley put up a very commendable effort and well played to them. They were a testament to Kear's ability to coach organisation and teamwork.

When you bring in as many new players as we have its inevitable that some of them just will not work out. Its not necessarily a reflection on the coach its just the way it is. Sir Alex Ferguson once said that if only 1 out of 3 signings he made were flops then he would be happy.

The real test for Lowes is to qet the balance right between giving new players time to settle and deciding in good time which players are going to give us the best chance against the SL teams. I reckon he'll spend the next 7 or 8 games juggling the team about before it becomes make your mind up time.

The elephant in the room regarding Siejka is that he wasn't the club's first choice for 7 when we were still recruiting. We didn't get the scrum half we wanted and so ended up settling for Siejka. I can't remember how much time we had left to recruit someone else after the GoB farce, but I can't help but feel that Siejka was signed because we didn't really have any other options.

I thought that the amount of changes forced on us by injury played a big part in us looking so disjointed. The backline was almost completely different to the previous week. When we moved the ball wide it was far from slick and easy to defend against. Runners were heading sideways and it was no wonder Ulugia ended up in touch a few times as he got the ball with nowhere to go. It was poor that we kept doing that. I hope Purtell and Baille are back soon as I wasn't convinced at all by Henry and I thought Shaw is better at fullback.

On Siejka I thought he was pretty anonymous which isn't ideal for a half back. As FA said he defended ok but in attack he was poor. He doesn't seem to be able to move the ball quick enough. Many times yesterday he takes a pass and then pauses to feint to run then passes without fooling anyone and only serving to give slow ball to the men outside him. Our last tackle options were a bit rubbish yesterday too, some poor kicks. Gaskell was trying to have an influence and ended up at dummy half too often. We looked far less fluid than in previous weeks and were almost caught out.

In the forwards I thought that Olbison had a good game, he kept it simple and defended really well. O'Brien was well watched and our props didn't look as impressive as in recent weeks. I thought we were eclipsed in the 2nd half by the Batley forwards who executed a really simple but effective game plan. I was surprised Lauaki didn't get more minutes going downhill in the first half. Fleming looks a bit off the pace at the moment.

Williams took his try very well and Shaw's goalkicking was superb. Had Siejka been kicking we'd have lost for certain.

Moving on I can see us giving Siejka a few more games, if there's no improvement then I'd move Mullaney to halfback and Shaw to fullback.

Think you may well be right with that. The main downside is maybe that it would leave us boxed in a bit if we got injuries to Mullaney or Gaskell. I know we have one or two players who have 'half' on their CV, but none we've actually seen there, let alone who have had any chance to get any sort of partnership.

We were very very fortunate to win yesterday. Batley must be kicking themselves, though they shouldn't, as they were superb imo.

From our pov we bombed far too many chances in the first half but, on the positive side, didn't get too rattled and, unlike at Leigh, we didn't try to respond to Batley's [this time, wholly legal physicality by fighting fire with fire. Our more measured approach turned out to be the correct one, though we need to learn that you don't [ihave[/i to score on [ievery[/i set..

In many respects this is just the kind of game we needed - the games will be very intense in the middle eights and the more practice we get in these qualifying games the better.