Tricky one this as they seem in good touch. They seem to blow hot and cold so we’ll see (obviously only if you are wearing sun glasses!)
One thing is clear though March is a big month for us. There are 3 winnable games- albeit 2 are away. If we get no joy then we go into 2 unwinnable games in April followed by one more opportunity to win at home against Barrow before the overly extended run of away games takes the momentum out of the season.

They've certainly won the right to be confident off the back of their last two fixtures. I think there is something there for us if we sharpen up in possession, particularly in good ball. Phases against Fax showed we can defend with intent, however the consistency over 80 probably still not there yet.
Agree with your assessment of next month, we really do need to be ripping some two pointers away.

We need to win this, yes Sheffield are on form, but this is not Tolouse or Fev, we need to be winning these games at home

It would be good if we put in at least a decent performance. As Knocker says our defence looks sharp it’s our attack that is somewhat predictable. I think where we are is that we can no longer out spend other teams and so we need to rely on imports and keeping a good team spirit going. You only have to look at who some of the other fairly modest teams are able to recruit and the DR arrangements going on to see that it’s a struggle for us. They just don’t want to come here.
It would, of course, help if we recruited in a timely fashion, for instance during the off season. Sadly, if we could get to the end of the season as a mid ranking team that would, in the space we now occupy, be a major success. Although as others have noted pretty much everybody/everybody? Is off contract at the end of the season so we could be down amongst the dead men once again in ‘24.

W'e'll never beat Sheffield tomorrow. We could barely beat a weak Whitehven team last week. Feel sure to bash me if we win

What a Baldrick style cunning plan Torbreck, we play Saturday when they are expecting Sunday. That might just work if we can nobble Northernbloke's mate in the middle.

I see no trains on the Thameslink line to Haydons Road on Sunday. That coupled with no trains on my line out to Essex has finally knocked it on the head for me. I can't see how Broncos will ever attract big crowds to Plough Lane with the lack of transport options. It's a very nice stadium but with a branch line station with a half hourly Sunday service, a single bus route, again half hourly frequency and various tube and rail stations 25 minutes walk away coupled with limited parking it's not great to get to. At least Trailfinders had multiple frequent bus routes and plenty of street parking even though the rail and tube was a bit of a hike. Ironically I can drive to Ebbsfleet in less than an hour!

No Raiwalui again, rapidly turning into our Rugby League standard issue 'mercurial halfback'. So mercurial I'm not entirely sure he exists

Perhaps he is busy helping Emmanuel Waine gain his Visa !

The loan periods for Silva, Eckersley and Hill are all due to expire after this weekend I believe.

I suspect Grant is still injured despite being in the 21.

You'd think travelling to Keighley and Newcastle short handed is shooting yourself in the foot. Needs some movement next week.

Remind me, when does the current pre-season finish? !!!

September sometime I believe.

2-4-1 deal in the gold lounge, meaning it's now £20 including a match ticket to make Hughes feel warm and fuzzy......pathetic effort to make the gold lounge viable only 1 game in.
Only chance we have is if sheffield rock up at ebbsfleet again

If anyone is going to the Gold Lounge on Sunday can they just check the cupboards to make sure our Fijian half back isn’t locked in one. Recruiting only those who fit the culture is one thing. Recruiting people who fit our culture but not on match day is just odd. Probably time for less comms. about the fxxxxing Gold Lounge and more of an update on recruitment. I assume he injured himself during our one pre season friendly but would be good to know. As is the match day squad is taking on a very settled look, which is good, but when our loanees go it will look very bare.

If the Elizabeth line is running on Sunday can you get to one of the Essex stations on it?
Go to Tottenham Court Road then change onto the Northern Line to Tooting Broadway- there’s a few buses that go sort of in the direction of Plough Lane or it’s about a 20 minute walk

No trains on the Elizabeth Line or Greater Anglia this weekend I'm afraid. When everything is working it's two hours each way for me so replacement buses or lengthy walks really put me off going. We've had years of it in my part of Essex, with replacement of overhead lines followed by Elizabeth Line related closures between Shenfield and Liverpool St. We currently have a sequence of six weekends of it with the 7th Saturday being a strike day!

So from the horse’s mouth Grant isn’t fit this week. So when you subtract the 3 short term loanees from the equation that leaves us with 17. So I think we can officially say, puttting all the ‘culture’ malarkey to one side, we are officially short on the Championship level player front. So that’s all good.
on off The field front we just about managed to announce ‘sponsors’ before the season started and the 1st team do have shirts for the start of the season but replica shirts front still some time off, although the season started some weeks ago. Is the website up to date re sponsors etc? What do you think. I don’t know but I think those in charge could do with giving their heads a shake and seeing if therefore any learning points because, you know, this doesn’t seem great to me.

Agree with you BT, but I'm increasingly mystified by what, as you say "culture malarkey" might actually be?
In any event, we don't seem to be able to find any that fit & they appear to have plenty in common with the Dodo.

Yes DC it’s really difficult to unpick. 3 kids from Wigan have it. Seemingly any number of heartlands pros offered to us don’t. 20 odd from last year including some ‘projects’ who barely got any game time and Academy recruits dont, a couple of guys from Fiji and ONG who are yet to contribute do. On the face of it it seems a load of old bo***cks but I do wonder if our recruitment in 2021 poisoned the well a bit. We had players but not really a team and ended up 8th which I think we can all agree for a FT side was poor. Let’s see where we are come April but at first blush our recruitment has been spectacularly unimpressive. Any way I’ve got my sunglasses and I’ll be at tomorrow’s match so let’s see what happens.

Seems to be just an excuse for inadequate recruitment.

Great that the club has not managed to put one tweet out on twitter today.To stay up to date with the game follow Sheffield Eagles twitter page.

Maybe the Twitter meister is doubling up as buck or buck?
The pictures on their last tweet show a level of insecurity about attendances that is encouraging.......a snap of a queue at the turnstile......lol....

Poor performance in my opinion but a game which we were somehow in a position to win. One shocking conversion miss and some poor last tackle options from Oli Leyland probably cost us. Where is Raiwalui ?

The correct outfit had been sourced for Dusty today. That was the main positive.

A frustrating result but not one we have any right to feel too aggrieved about for me. That first 18 mins, we were an absolute rabble, dropping balls, errors in possession. We put a kick up in good ball with a numbers advantage, not a single one of our players jumps for it. Walker absolutely bawled the right edge out and for good reason. As much as we eventually came into the game and played some decent stuff, I thought Sheffield made life difficult for themselves as much as anything.
Looks like we came out of it with several injuries too.

Frustrating result. Sheffield just the better team but London got themselves in a strong position and remained competitive. No Bienek today which I think left us one inside presence short, which became a big issue with Albert's early injury. Natoli and Basset showed a bit more today; I was a bit underwhelmed against Batley, but looked good today.

Kick-off to London. Turned it over. Sheffield attack our left. Macani out of position. Try. Not the greatest start!

Was impressed by Lovell, Stock and Silva today.

Raiwalui (or similar). Desperately needed. The team needs an x-factor in that position. Parata playing as a half back looks so wrong to me. Looked excellent last season. Maybe it's me but seeing little from him today. But he's in the wrong position surely.

Leading by two with lots of time to go, do you kick a penalty to lead by four? Then do you follow it by another to lead by six? Surely the odds starting inside the opposition's 22 twice are you'd expect a try. Even if you don't a converted try later would call and beat conceding a converted try. Instead our two penalties were only enough for a tie when Sheffield converted a try and we'd lost the imitative. Very defensive in my opinion.

In the first half Leyland's conversion hit the near post square on when he was kicking from about 10 yards off centre to his right. We wondered if that would bite us in the bum later. And it did.

With Albert likely injured. Bienek presumably injured. Waine yet to arrive. The three Wigan lads presumably an the end of their initial loan. Raiwalui who knows. Grant still out. I'd suggest this is "Recruitment Week" about four months too late. Whilst this team shouldn't be relegation level, they are falling straight into another relegation battle.

Crowd way down which is a shame. Will confidently start at 500+, but not hugely more. I can go a bit higher, but not threatening four figures.

He went into his hotel wardrobe to get his coat & now is in Narnia.