And more than anything else it brings pressure upon us from the off. We need one asap. The pressure of each kick now for the kicker is ridiculous whoever it is

No point talking about ref decisions today. A lot of them were a mystery.

We will get better and are exciting to watch!

Yes he should be stood square but no one else bothered from either team for most of the game.

Refs like Child pull one out of the hat when it suits and you can't really do anything about it.

In that position though a ref is looking intently at the acting half area because of the amount of scooting done by the team coming out of their own quarter. We should be clean in this area, but Trin give away pens for offside and not square regularly in the oppositions own quarter and have done for years. It really bugs me that we cant force the pressure in this area like the top teams do. We should be better than a ref that does not know the game past the official rule book.

I know our lot didn`t get out of second gear, or even break sweat today. But if it hadn`t of been for our good defense I think the score would have been a lot closer.
Stick with it as your performance today would have won a few games against different opposition.

You are not wrong but come on he ignored the same incidents several times today, we should be squeaky clean and it needs addressing but i don't think for minute it'll stop refs pulling plays when they feel like it.

And thats not suggesting he had it in for us. its just how it works.

Thought without the Ref's calls today you were very lucky to get over our line. your lack of creativity was plain to see and it was Child's calls which got you within close enough distance to score...TBF cockayne took his tries well take nowt away from him.

we were poor too and nowhere near our best and was feeling a bit uneasy halfway through the 2nd half till we managed to pull clear.

Child was very up and down Al but it just really bugs me that we cant turn the screw when we have a team in their quarter and struggling. We need to be more clinical like what the top teams are. Saying that i still think we are not far off tbh.

Thought it was telling that the only time they had joy down the middle was just before halftime when Ali Southern and Raleigh were off at the same time. The forwards are looking fine and came out of our half a lot better than the last home match, our weakness for me is two fold the centres are not defending well enough or creating chances and we lack a bit of magic at half back although this was better today. Still lots of positives but individual errors are killing us

Thing is for me even though we are losing RA seems reluctant to change the team and it seems it is picking itself apart from the starting props.We have SL standard players in reserve who although RA didn't sign them are still capable of playing 1st team(Ellis,mariano,wildie,davey,morton,trout)and would be putting pressure on the players playing every week but it seems nobody is playing to keep their place cos they know they might be dropped next week.

Surely Southern to second row please Mr.Agar...time for some rotation before the Warrington match.

He's not big enough and played second row in the NRL he's also more likely to get injured playing out of position against players on average 2 stone heavier than him.



Amor, Wood and Raleigh maybe should start at front row next week with James, Wilkes, Ellis and Lauititi on the bench. James is a prop and if he's not going to be used then sell him.



Drop Washbrook and put Johnson at 13, he played some time there last season and seemed to go ok. It'll also help with the lack of go forward and size in the pack against Warrington.

I thought Frankie Mariano was impressive last season and surprised that he hasn't had a chance this year. Any chance of a recall next game ?

He needs to perform on the 20's before he gets a recall to the first team.

My take on todays game :-

(1) Some poor defence at times out wide cost us dearly (Collis shooting out of the line on the last tackle for one of their tries springs to mind). Why we don't move up quicker like all the other teams do against us, I don't know, but we seem happy to allow other teams play makers to run across field looking for runners instead of knocking them down

(2) Its ok shifting the ball about from side to side, but unless someone takes it upon themselves to come onto the ball at pace and straighten the direction of play up so their going forward, we are not going to cause the better teams too many problems, whose defence will by and large deal with it no problem.

(3) If Aiton is going to play Hooker, he needs to run far more from dummy half, one of the noticeable things when wood comes on, is that he isn't afraid to to do this and pose problems for the opposition defence, which then puts us on the front foot.

(4) Childs seems to have 5 minute spells here and there where he decides he is going to penalise for certain offences and then forgets about them for the rest of the game. Very frustrating, particularly when Aiton nearly had his head took off by two Hudds tacklers, but its play on, and then a few minutes later puts their player in touch and gives us what appears to be a great attacking platform, but gets pulled for a high shot. Also, I was right behind where John went over the line and am convinced that the Hudss defender pulled the ball free which meant play on, and thus the try should have stood. 24-20 to Hudds at that stage would have been interesting. Don't know what the point of the in-goal official is if he ain't gonna get involved in situations like that. Finally, on Childs, Brough was takng the pee with the amount of time he took to take each drop out, but Childs didnt have the balls to do owt about it. He may have stopped the clock, but Brough was giving his players a welcome breather with the amount of time he was taking.

(5) We need to play with more composure. Some of the mistakes we made were from trying to over play, when if we had gone through our sets and played a bit smarter, we would have put more pressure on Hudds, had better field position and maybe got a better foothold in the game.

(6) We all know its a 17 man game, so FFS RA needs to use them all. The way he used Walshaw today was a joke, especially as he played ok at Hull last week. When you only have 10 interchanges, a lightweight pack and some players carrying knocks, you simply can't afford to have players sat for 75 minutes on the bench.

(7) John IMO played well today, but unfortunately Smith who has IMO played ok in the other games I have seen, decided to play his worst game of the season. His tackling today was appalling and his kicking game was very poor. We need to have both halves playing well at the same time to give us a better platform to play off (both territorially and when we are in the opposition 20).

I am happy to give the team and coach some more time, but some of the issues that keep cropping up week in week out, need to be eradicated quickly, otherwise question marks will be raised about the team and coaches abilities (including from me).

Be interesting to see how much time Agar gets and nothing seems to have changed to me from his Hull days. You got a good squad there but playing way below your potential. We had a very poor attack and defence under agar and we now have the best defence in the league with alot of the same players.

our defence has improved as you would have noticed at KC last week.

On the Kirmond thing it's a matter of degree. He was so not square child had no option but to blow up. He was right to do so even if ignoring other infringements which were not as blatant. Very poor play not bad officiating

I think you will find the game was played in atrocius conditions and it was more of a case of grinding it out it will be interesting when both teams play each other again hopefully in better conditions.

Good post, especially point No5 , it's something I've noticed is we try to almost do a bit too much with the ball and a lot of the times it's just not needed, like you say we need to be smarter with ball in hand.

Looking for the high risk killer play too often on their line rather than building pressure.

This was true. The ref couldn't fail to miss it if all us under that new stand at the other end of the ground clearly could. Even then though it took another penalty from Raleigh on half way to give Shudds the final field position for the game breaker try.

Just a question here... without putting the kickers down or the coach for that matter. Don't want to hear the trolls option - sick of listening to their record. But why when we get a penalty do we not kick for goal i mean some of them are gifts and even if we didn't get the goal we still get the ball back for another set of six????????

No confidence to kick for goal, and with the attempts thus far i'm not surprised. As an aside, I thought it was noticeable that John had a better game without the kicking duties to worry about.

Thought he played pretty well. Couldn't quite see was it him who threw the cut out passes for Cockayne?

Yes. Agree with KK, he seemed to play alot better without having responsibility for goalkicking