As i see it the next two games will be crucial. Win both then Bradford at home, we will be on our way and looking good. Cant afford any slip ups and weather and ground conditions may not work in our favour. slightly worried i must confess despite excellent performance against HKR - we also play Fev 3x and they seem to have strengthened, only good news in Week 2 was Tolouse losing which may mean they wont be so great on the road........

We need four points from these two games, no excuses. The pitches will probably be heavy but we are a full time team and should be able to compete for the whole eighty minutes.

The weather forecast for the weekend at Stalybridge means we can expect a heavy pitch, Heavy rain Friday PM and all day Saturday. Sunday though should be fine.
If you remember last season, the football game on the Saturday was called off yet we played on Sunday.

We are honoured this weekend when we play Oldham, Mr Ben Thaler is our referee.
Let us hope the team learn from last weekend and cut out the stupid penalties.

Well not lost the silly penalties.

Got the 2 points though!

A wee bit close for comfort that scoreline!

We seem to be specialising in those sort of scorelines on the road this season!

If it's working for the England Union boys then it's good enough for me.

Jossy who are these union boys you talk about?

Sounds like we were lucky to get 2 points, they hit the posts after a penalty at the end. Sounds like we gave away too many free Mtrs again,n that's going to have to be sorted

We seem to be specialising in those sort of scorelines on the road this season!

But what you need to remember is we are the only team which travels so far and plays the game on the same day. As we get into the season and the team get more used to this ritual things will become easier for them.

For me the game was summed up in the first minute – we kicked off, deep into Oldham territory, ball bounces and we regather. 2 drives, ball spun out wide, intercepted and we are 6-0 down. Ok, we won, but we were second best for long periods of the game.

In the first half it certainly felt like over 80% of play was in our half, a mixture of Oldham’s forward endeavour and kicking game and our lack of forward impetus and mistakes, kicking out on the full, dropped passes, etc.

We outscored the opposition 4 tries to 2, so that would suggest decent attack but frankly that would be wrong, here again ponderous, ragged, unorganised, and but for a late late length of the feild effort from Rhys we would have lost this one. Even then we gave Oldham numerous chances to draw level with penalties (one attempt hit the upright), dropping the ball and lack of completion – I dread to think what our completion rate was.

On a positive note, I thought Evans looked strong, Gee and Pitts certainly have a toughness about them, Ackers another 80mins stint, Ioane lively. On the other hand Dixon was awful (give KPP a go), Sammut random, Offendahl a carthorse, Roqica a penalty machine. The rest ? Well, they were on the field ...

Worrying....................................... but we won

Dixon was awful, he could not do a thing right. I was concerned every time he was even near the ball. I am pretty sure he will play at Dewsbury though.
Hendo will hope he will put in a good performance against what look to be relegation favourites and boost If he fails there, it may be a few games for him at the Skolars

Strikes me that we played better in the game we lost than the two games we've won.

Dixon is becoming a bit of a concern already, he has arguably the best centre in the comp next to him, I know we all talk about confidence etc maybe he came in over confident and thinks he can do too much. Think he needs to get back to the basics of catching the ball and keeping hold of it before he thinks about the leagues top try scorer stat that was bandied about.
Mark loane I am liking more and more as each game goes on, since middle 8s last season he has started to ,are a real impression. The others hmmm they need to sort out the penalties.
We need to post some points against dewsbury next week.

agree, we need a bit of a confidence boost.

Penalties - we never seem to learn, which is worrying

Dixon, agree about basics - he ptentially is a great player going forwward, but we cannot afford a liability on the wing, not sure how far Grant is off fitness or give the young lad a run, if dixon remains shaky

Around 4 weeks apparently

I expect that the pitch at Dewsbury will be a bit of a bog this coming weekend. The pitch looked awful when they played Swinton two weeks ago.

Dewsbury are likely to bring in several DR players from Wakefield for our game on Sunday. This is due to them suffering an injury crisis with around thirteen players only fit to play.

They did that for the first game and took a hiding

Maybe they could just put out the Hemel squad

Going up to Dewsbury on Sunday, it will be my first away game for a few years so lets hope for a good result and the train being ontime....

If you haven't been to Dewsbury by train before either get a taxi or allow longer to walk than you expect to need. Nice and hilly. Cracking station refreshment rooms if you are waiting for a train.