When the opposition run out at the start of each half I will give them two or three claps as a courtesy. Aside from that unless they do something extremely good indeed I will not acknowledge anything they do aside from moaning they should be onside, that they have thrown a forward pass or that they're holding us down.

If one of theirs does a great tackle, throws a superb pass etc then yes I will acknowledge it. But I am biased. I am there to watch my lot win. Handsomely, hopefully. But it doesn't happen now because we don't aim up when the weaker teams come to town. London should have been nilled yesterday yet score 4 tries. That's terrible from us, it really is when you think how we used to pride ourselves on our defence. We concede too many points, full stop, and it's because we don't work as hard for each other (that old chestnut, but a valid point) as we used to. it's like they're not as tight as a group as they used to be because they've fallen in love with themselves onanistically rather than being best mates and standing shoulder to shoulder with them fighting for the collective.

And 800 more than Wakey got against Wigan, but yet there is a thread on their board mocking our crowd !!! Brilliant

i wanted us to nil them yesterday, be ruthless, show no mercy, smash em to pieces, it didn't happen though.
i was disappointed we conceded that first try and would imagine most of our supporters were too, yet people were generously applauding the fact that we had let poor opposition in for a try, to say i was surprised is an understatement!
i have no problem applauding any team if they score a wonder try, but to just give the opposition a token/sympathetic round of applause after they have scored is poor, like daz said, what will our players think when our own fans are applauding the opposition when one of our aims is to stop them scoring!

Giants won yesterday without getting out of second gear and although we'd have liked to have scored more points it's the result that matters, although I'm hoping we play better on Thursday.

spot on, winning is a habit, winning gets you points on the board, playing brilliant rugby doesn't

welcome by the way.

Thanks for the welcome, I've been reading this forum for years but never actually made an account up until now, it will be nice to have an input on proceedings.

Welcome Giantsfraz

Cheers daz

Wuzz and I have had many discussions about this - I will not clap the opposition under any circumstances (well apart from the obvious of an injured player going off/getting up or as has been said an exceptional try). Our home games should be under gladiatorial conditions and the opposition should be 'bricking it' not expecting tea and cake..

spot on fifi, of course we should be sporting when it's needed but not applauding the opposition when they score against us!

I don't recall anyone clapping in the family stand when London scored on Saturday. A few applauded when they came out, but not when they scored.

I have a soft spot for London so usually applaud them OFF the field at the end of the match. The only other club I will even consider applauding is Catalans - or a lower club in the Cup.

Ditto, welcome GiantsFraz.

Bad day at the office on Saturday, abysmal performance from a team supposedly building up momentum for the end of season silverware, conceding 20+ points to a London team who, yes they put the effort in but in reality are worse than we ever were in our early SL years. Don't know whats wrong with the players, the London 1st try was just comical defending and how did we manage to bomb a walk in try and allow a lone defender to intercept an abysmal pass and score a lengh of the field try ?? these were just one of many dissappointing lapses we're getting used to this season. Blame the ref all we want but the players just don't seem to learn anything and just keep giving the ref good reason to penalise us and put needless pressure on ourselves, I'd say most of the pens we give are are mostly deserved because of stupid/lazy play around the ruck, whether the ref applies the same treatment to the other side is irrelevent the players should know the score, clean up their game and be smart enough to play accordingly. This and the amount of possession we throw away is going to come back and bite us big style in the playoffs (I assume we'll reach them) we probably deserved bigger wins against Cas, Wigan and Lids but in the end we end up hanging on because we've got into the habit of handing the opposition a lifeline because of our increasing ability of switching off, going through the motions, playing dumb rugby and not going for the "kill" when the opposition are on the ropes. Saturday could and should have been a chance to iron out a few of the flaws that have crept into our game this season but if anything the match just highlighted them. We don't half like making things hard for ourselves. Big improvements in concentration and effort needed on Thursday and for the rest of the season. The only plus from Saturday is that we're still there or thereaboutsin the League and we all know there's a lot more (hopefully) to come from this team.
Come on Fartown, get it sorted.

yes
yes
absolutely
hear hear!

Whlst agreeing with a lot of those sentiments - and yes, our defence is totally the opposite of what it has been in recent years - let's put the glass is half full argument, but all is not doom and gloom.

All sports people know how difficult it is to raise your game against weak opposition in the same way that weak clubs put in that extra effort against top opposition - just ask Wigan & Wakey fans.

We're all ardent supporters on here. Let's put our efforts into bringing more people to games.

Bang on that mate, everytime a penalty is given the amount of folk berating the Ref is ridiculous, 90% of the time they are deserved through lack of discipline, i'm often sat there shouting 'gerrof him', 'roll away' etc to our players as i can see what's coming.
Plus i don't think there has been a game where we have been totally in control and comfortable knowing we have another couple of gears should we need them...we seem to either build up a lead and try and see if we can keep the opposition out or give away a lead to see if we can catch them !.

yup the clapping of opposition teams at our ground



never been to another ground and seen them clapping us! maybe we are just not as passionate as them and not too bothered if we lose hey?!



would love our place to be a fortress where other players hate to come, not welcoming so they can take home the 2 points

But the Galpharm is pretty much a fortress. In regular super league over the last two season our home record is
p20 w15 d2 L3
The only defeats have been the horror show against Bradford and 2 against the bogey team Warrington. So other than Warrington i am not sure any side comes to the Galpharm expecting to win.

Maybe not win but people are complaining we're not ruthless enough against the lesser teams, if our fans were to make it uncomfortable for the opposition then maybe the players may respond to that, they're hardly gonna bust a gut to thrash London when that team gets applauded for getting back to within 10 points of us !!!!

Some interesting views, I too was frustrated on Saturday, however I felt we did start the game well, a measured professional approach that saw us four scores up in about half an hour. Things got frustrating after that.

Like some others I felt Tim Roby was poor, he took a very sympathetic view over London offences and a much harsher view of ours. That is ok, perhaps even wise when refereeing a schoolboys match, but a Super League game not so. Points difference could equate to home advantage and progression in the play offs.

Let me give an example of this, at one point in the first half he awarded consecutive penalties against us, near our own line for being offside at the play the ball. He let London throw the ball wide and get snuffed out and on one occaission knock on. Contrast that with the break away London try, our ptb after the break saw no London players back the 10, we threw it wide, dropped the ball and instead of coming back for the many clear offsides (including the guy who picked the ball up) he played on.

Not a lot you can do about refereeing performances though, but for me the disappointing thing is we seemed to get frustrated and adopted the training session mentality.

I strongly believe our attitude was good early on but we dropped off. We need to control what we can control and block out the rest. That is the difference between good teams and winners.

To be honest, i didn't even notice the Ref on Saturday so i certainly have no issues with anything he did during the game...and in no way was he to blame for anything that happened or didn't....he didn't stop players making tackles or jumping for balls that they scored their soft tries from.

i agree with that, also to add that if we had closed games out that we had healthy leads in, widnes away, and hull KR and wire at home we would be joint top with saints on 26 points. let's face it, we threw those 3 games away.
whilst you can also say that it proves the point that we can't close games out, can't be ruthless, yes i would agree with that, but looking at it in a positive spin, we have played fairly poorly for probably 12/13 games and with a bit of luck and a bit more care we would be sitting joint top.

And that is exactly what is wrong with this league, you can play poorly for half the season but still have a chance of being the top team !!! half of the team's in the league don't even try to finish top and want to save themselves for a 4 game end of season tournament.

I want us to be top every year by playing to the best of our abilities every week and being there cos we are the best team not cos 6 others weren't that bothered where they finish..even now it looks like our squad have that attitude as well now !

The fans want to see the team rattle big score up against smaller teams but it seems the players are quite content with doing enough to just scrape the win and not using up too much or getting injured. i would love to see us put 50,60 etc on teams like London like others do but if that is how the squad are looking at the season it won't happen.

yep i dont fear anyone at our place but i mean as in the atmosphere the fans generate, when its leeds/wigan etc its great but the lower teams with not many fans we seem to want to encourage them to score and feel welcome!

yep look at wigan on sunday ...played the kids.. no doubt if it was a play off game they would of played bowen and the like

hopefully the new league structure will help make the season games more important