Squad is out:

Callum Bustin
Steve Crossley
Connor Farrell
George Flanagan
David Foggin-Johnston
Matt Garside
Dalton Grant
James Green
Sam Hallas
Evan Hodgson
Liam Kirk
Jordan Lilley
Rowan Milnes
Elliot Minchella
Ross Peltier
Brandon Pickersgill
Ethan Ryan
Jake Webster
Matty Wildie

I'm struggling to pick two centres out of that lot, will Minchella be put there again?

Good to have Peltier back though, decent bunch of props in there!

Only options I can take from that squad are either Minchella at centre, or Ryan at Centre and Pickersgill in at fullback.

Gibson must be injured but I haven’t heard anything

JK confirmed in todays T and A that the only injuries we have are Keyes, Jy, and Evans. Everyone else is fit. (His words not.mine)

Oaks and Gibson must really be in the bad books after the Keighley game.

With all that money we have just received why don’t we go out and buy a centre or full back, toya at Cas for example, or ash at Leeds, or are we saying what we have are better than them, even though there either injured or playing crap, or is it that we just don’t want to spend the money because it’s already spoken for

Hmmmm.. methinks you might have got the correct answer

Probably Ryan at centre with Picksersgill back in at FB.

or Garside.

No Storton?

Please to see Hodgson in. Ran well at Keighley.

Sounds like a forward battle is in the offing as Fev's backline will be makeshift to say the least with five of the seven who have usually played there this season unavailable for one reason or another.

The main reason being that they actually play for Leeds Rhinos

Pickers to FB and Ryan to centre seems the most logical move for mine. Does Grant play centre at all? First time this season we've been stacked in the forwards. About time too. Hopefully we can kick on from here.

I’d go:

Pickersgill
Foggin-Johnston
Webster
Ryan
Grant
Lilley
Milnes
Kirk
Wildie
Crossley
Farrell
Garside
Minchella

Flanagan
Green
Peltier
Bustin

Hodgson and Hallas to miss out for me. Unless we go Hallas at 13 then Garside drops out.

I'll be surprised if Kear picks 5 props in his 17.

Why would Hallas miss out? Most people said he was one of our best players last week.

Garside seems to have offered little or nothing this season, I'd have Hallas ahead of him any day of the week.

I think the majority would agree.
No way does Hallas get left out

1. Teteh, Carey, and Whylie are all injured, and Boas may or may not return from injury.
2. Not sure Bradford are in any position to comment about using Leeds players.

Well, if you are referring to 2017 when we had 4 Leeds players on loan, that was obviously to get a team onto the field at all, having just gone through liquidation and having to start the season in the Championship on 2-weeks notice, after our squad had been stripped bare.

But let's not go over that old chestnut again.

What we didn't do then, and definitely wouldn't now, is enter into an agreement with a SL club to effectively act as their reserve grade. I just checked and your backline last weekend had 3 Rhinos players. So I don't know where the players you listed above are meant to fit into the team.

With the news breaking of Cheyse Blair signing for Cas, this could be feasible.

Egodo has been named in the 17 for 5 out of 10 of Castleford's games this season. Even with the signing of a new threequarter, he's clearly in the plans. They may allow him to go out on loan, but I'd be amazed if they released him.

Fair assessment

The first bit is simply not true - Bradford continued to re-sign the likes of Oledzki, Cam Smith etc late into the season whenever they became available again after being recalled by Leeds. Bradford were perfectly capable of fielding a starting 17 without Leeds players - you did it twice against us, once in the Cup, once in the League over Easter - but generally chose not to because the Leeds players were better than some of your existing ones. It's just comical when fans of some teams claim that their use of DR/loans is somehow "different". Most Fev fans are actually against the concept of DR - like most fans overall - but it's amusing when fans of other teams who have also used it get on their high horse about it.

Your comemnt about effectively acting as Leeds' reserve grade is also far from the truth. If that were the case, the likes of Alex Sutcliffe, who has nowhere to play at Leeds, would be with us every week. He has played once for us so far (at Leigh, when he was drafted in at the last minute following a late withdrawal), and he'll play for us tomorrow. If Teteh and Carey were fit (Whylie is a long-term absentee), I'm pretty certain that neither Sutcliffe or Broadbent would be playing.

How does that relate to Golding, Briscoe and Newman all playing for you last week?

As for us keeping the Leeds lads in 2017, of course they were better than the other players we were able to sign. We didn't even have a club two weeks before the start of the season, so we had to sign either players from our previous incarnation that literally nobody else wanted, or make up the squad with loans or short-term deals.

Because you were trying to suggest that we are "effectively acting as their reserve grade". If that were the case, we would be fielding the maximum five Leeds players on DR each week regardless of whether we wanted to select them or not, and that's manifestly not the case.

And yes, we have regularly chosen to go with Briscoe and Golding over some of our younger/more inexperienced players, just as you did in 2017. There's no difference between what we are doing and what you did.

And we had to let about 20 players go because of our financial situation at the end of last season, and if you look at the teams we fielded in our pre-season friendlies, they were filled with very recent signings from local amateur clubs. Presumably you are saying we should have played these recently-signed young lads in our early-season games rather than the DR guys, yet it was ok for you to play the Leeds (and Widnes) guys in 2017?

Let me explain the diffrence.

without borrowing players in 2017 there would have been some weeks where we wouldnt have been even able to field 17 players. (You will know all about that after last years embarrasment) This year you have enough players to run a reserve grade yet you still CHOOSE to play the lads from leeds rather than play your own players

Is that clear enough for you?