There'll be plenty of time this year when one of McNally, Keyes or Chisholm are injured or needing a rest. Pickersgill could be the first choice to come in as that cover. He'll still get plenty of game time to help his development, without the burn out of being in there every week and without as much pressure. Then in a year or two, he's much more ready for a regular place.

Before the season started I was a bit concerned about whether we had enough halfback cover, we now seem to have almost an embarrassment of riches. It's good to see Pickersgill doing well, it must be down to his sponsors



It's great to see such a strong spirit in the camp, especially after the last few years. I genuinely feel that on the field we've definitely turned a corner.

We seemed to deal with Keighley much better than during the pre-season game.
Seems Kear was wise to their wind-up tactics and looked to have instructed the boys to not get involved and as such Keighley had no plan B and were deftly put to the sword.

Hopefully, winning becomes habit forming for the team and we can go a fair way before we get anything in the L column.

The fact that he seemed to make a conscious effort to walk away after being speared rather than get involved in the afters showed he was listening to you

Yes it seems that way, i am taking the credit for that

What was attendance yesterday?

2912.

Biggest outside of SL.

Thanks Pal. I thought they looked more than that there.

Pickersgill looking like a rough diamond. 15-20 Games in the 17 for him and it will bring him along nicely fo next season.

I was going to say roughly the same. Gledhill said as much at the start when this was announced. Most League 1 clubs will not have the infrastructure to deal with this so expect it to continue with patchy reception throughout the season.

The fact we struggled to get radio broadcast last year at some championship clubs should suggest as much anyway.

True enough!
My take on the incident though was that it should have been a red. Not that it was malicious, as I don't think it was, but most players, when they realise they have got the ball carrier in a dodgy position gently hold the opponent until he is safely back on the ground but Beharrel (?) just let him drop onto his head. I've seen less sever tackles that that one given red.

That said, as said above, for the sake of the match I'm glad he stayed on.

Well the Bulls TV version was in HD and no poor/drop out audio, still not sure Proper Sport will be a good vehicle for Bulls unless they up the quality of their live broadcasts, perhaps moving to YouTube may give a better more consistent bandwidth.

The match on YT is very good, in HD as well. Thanks to all, and the commentary is 1st. Class as well. Downloaded all this years matches and there seems to be a growing excitement about the team.

Well it's a free service and is better than nothing, so it's not doing any harm. If you read the comments made during the match there are plenty of people watching from some distances away who wouldn't be able to watch otherwise so they are very grateful.
The quality won't be anything to do with facebook/youtube being the host. It's because it's being streamed live / uploaded rather than the later videos which are obviously recordings and compressed.
The quality of the stream relies 100% on the strength/speed of the internet connection being used. If it was a public wifi or (even worse) a public/private mobile network connection like 4G then the stream is always going to be of a very low resolution with potential buffering and dropped frames. If we're using a private broadband/fibre connection at Odsal, which we might be, then you should spot an improvement in the quality of the live broadcast.

The argument against that would be the BBC Streaming of the Challenge Cup. Which, whilst not HD, is clear and very good quality for a live stream. At grounds much worse than the likes of Keighley.

I'm sure that's down to some specialist equipment BBC will use, but the point remains that it's entirely possible to live stream in good quality from these crappy little grounds.

Yeah true. I'm not entirely sure how these things work but I don't think bbc broadcasts are 'streamed' directly using a mobile network or a public wifi.

I suspect that will be the case. More likely beamed back via whatever usual systems they use to their central "studio" where it's streamed then via a very high speed link.

I have no doubt it'll be down to technology which Proper Sport just won't have. But that doesn't take away from the fact that if they don't have it, the quality may end up being very bad at times which will mean some will turn off.

I don't think there's any easy answer unless a moneybags wants to throw some cash their way, which considering none have done that at Bradford in as long as I can remember, I can't see it happening any time soon.

I'm sure BBC have a bit more of a budget, knowhow and equipment than proper sports. Mick and John Keyes were sharing the same microphone on Sunday. The TV gantry wasn't strong enough to hold the commentators either. I'm not surprised there are issues but this is all new and will improve with experience. Great that it's happening at all. If the club can come up with a way of selling it to potential sponsors then it could be very lucrative.

If Proper Sports get good figures they may decide to invest a bit more?

Don't the Beeb use their iplayer, accessible from their website, for the feed? It seems a bit strange to not use such a resource when it's there.

Irrespective of the method by which the stream is delivered to the viewer (iplayer, youtube, facebook), the feed needs to get to that central hub in the first place. BBC most likely have very expensive mobile transmitters, probably vehicle based like sky, whereas Mick and the gang have to make do with WiFi and mobile phones.

Mick isn't the slenderest of people!

Wondered who'd be the first with that one

I'm really thankful for the picture and the commentary. Thanks to all.

As someone who can only get to a game or two each season I was really excited by this service. That's been tempered a little bit since, I fell asleep during the second half on Sunday...

Obviously it's value is going to depend on each ground's facilities. York was watchable, Keighley was just pixels, and no sound early on. I could only identify Lee Smith amongst the Bulls players as the pixels were larger. Also when they got creative with the zoom camera (I'm assuming a digital camera plugged in) I couldn't see a thing.

My only bugbear is why they need a new stream for the second half as so far this works and I miss the first quarter of an hour.

A shame about the gremlins as I would happily pay a couple of quid to watch the game streamed live if the quality was assured.

Didn't make it to the match but watched on the stream wasn't the best but better than nothing, especially with Micks commentary.

Re-watched the highlights the other day and the quality after post processing i assume was brilliant.