We just didn't have the will to win today, they were lacklustre, they collapsed when Tim Smith left the field, we were very lucky to come away with a point.

They made their way up field with ease today did salford. We had no aggression in defence, Salford obviously wanted it more. Annakin played brill though which is a bonus, Sykes having a poor year, not a patch on form from last year for me.

Very poor performance. Thought Annakin & Pooore ran hard and Cockayne was non stop, other that the rest were below par and the less said about Lee Smith and Paul Sykes the better. Probably their worst performance in a Wakey shirt and Sykes kicking all year has been poor. I'll say it again Trout is not ready to be a prop at SL level, he gets dominated every time but with Agars decision to drop Amor we didn't have much option but to play him there.

If Tim Smith is out any length of time we are screwed because there is no way in the world Kyle Wood is a superlegue halfback. He stops every time he gets the ball and his decision making is awful. Lucky to get away with a point in the end but its a point dropped for me.

Think agar should be respected for putting principle before points re Kyle amor especially with Andy Raleigh already missing

This about sums it up for me. Dont think Lee Smith has been that bad, but this is bang on otherwise i reckon.

If Tim Smith is injured and out for a few weeks we have no choice but to play Wood at 7 as the squad and talent to draw upon is small with Wildie not up to it yet. We'll just have to keep it to basic rugby and fix up our defence massively which sounds like a big improvement on today. Good news about Annakin today though



Sounds like the team thinks its better than what it is today and most were very complacent.



Next week we'll still be without Kirmond and Raleigh with possibly our main creative player Tim Smith joining them against St. Helens away! That will be a very tough ask to not get 50 put past us if play like today.

No one bigger than the club, hats off to Agar. Wonder how serious Amors line stepping was

I honestly thought Frankie Mariano had a decent game along with Mathers, Cockayne, Annakin

But if Wildie can handle and organise the team better than Wood then surely he must start at scrum half. Woods organisation and distribution from 1st receiver was poor today. Is Wood up to playing 7 for us?

In all fairness I think the damage was done whilst Smith was on the field, thats when they racked up most of their points.
Our crap first half was the problem and if we had played smarter then we could have cruised home easily with or without Smith.

Yes I believe so too, they seem to attack him because they know as well as we do hes not a great tackler. He doesnt often make tackles by himself but likes to be the second man in the tackle.

No No, you may have missed read my post mate, I'm not blaming smiths defence one bit. It was the way we threw the ball away early on and gave them so much easy possesion and position that lost us the game.
They racked up some very cheap points as a result and gained a bit of confidence and this made our fight back just a little beyond us.

Fair point. I thought he was sloppy on defence too.

That was a dour and boring game - exactly what we didn't need after two great performances against much tougher opposition; Salford are in a similar position to the one we were in a couple of years ago and on that basis, we should have buried them in the first half, even with a couple of first choice props missing.

On the positive side, Cockayne had another good game and Anakin looked like a real handful.

Crap game, crap performance and I still can't feel my fingers.

I think Washbrook tried too hard to replace the work and effort in attack that we are missing without Kirmond, sadly that is just not his game and he looked poor coming into the line every time. His main asset last year was his defence and even that appears quite lacking at the moment.
Wood will never be able to control a game at scrum half like Smith does and his decision making with ball in hand was quite poor.
Mellars certainly didn't do anything to put himself in the shop window, Fox disappointed again.

We are far too predictable in attack, never anyone coming back on an angle, which must make defending against us very easy.

Really annoyed tonight that we let this game get away, we should have had enough to win it comfortably and actually didn't even deserve the point we got IMO.

Game we should have won, bad team performance but there were some good individual ones, i.e Annakin and Cockayne. Aiton was woeful today and Wood wasn't any better, he just looked lost when he came on. Upon reflection we are increasingly missing ellis at dummy half!

Been banging on about this since last season but got put in my place several times, i thin Aiton is a cracking player and someone who would be on the team sheet every week, but he's not in the same league as Ellis at dummy half.

Yeah I've mentioned it before and got shot down! I think we'd be far better with Ellis starting and Aiton coming off the bench. Ellis has the ability to control the play the ball area and is a great passer of the ball, we looked far more composed with him there last year!

Ellis distribution from dummy half was so slick. He gave Tim Smith more time to work with at the back end of last season with that quick ball, which lead to Smith and us playing well. Would have much prefered to see Aiton and Ellis at hooker for us this season.

I don't know many people who wouldn't have preferred Aiton and Ellis as our 2 hookers but without knowing the ins and outs of what money he was on for the rest of his 3 year deal, it's hard to say if the club made a mistake. I think with him being the first guy we signed when we kept our license, it's just a guess but someone got a bit giddy when handing out his 3 year deal.

Anyway onwards and upwards,

I'm a massive admirer of Aiton, but I have to concede that his dummy half play isn't on a par with Ellis; his first pass is often poor and he doesn't engage the defenders in the way that Ellis did.

What's done is done though; on limited resources, we've got who we've got.

Hope Amor realises he's let his team mates and us fans down, and learns from this. I'm with Agar, keep the discipline or players will, literally, let the side down.

I agree, he had the bottle to do it and should be applauded for it. Shows you how vulnerable we are though with a couple of props out! Trout did not shirk anything, he is simply not built to be a prop but what other options did RA have? Olly played better than of late with one glorious break but I felt generally the Salford pack dominated and drew us into one man rugby. I hate to think what Saints are going to do to us!

Hopefully we'll play more like we did against Hudds and Catalans but with quiet a few key players out it's going to be hard but as long as they leave it all in the field and not play like headless chickens I'm not too bothered what the score is next week.

To be fair Sykes is not a stand off hes a great player to have in the squad but the fact is we need an out and out stand off sort that and we are not far off the conditions leveled things up on Sunday and we lacked the forwards