Peter Gentle claimed that there were plenty of positives to come out of yesterday's performance. What do you think they are?

Mckinnon
O'Carroll
No injuries

All of those, plus Martin looked decent when he came on. Seymour appears to have the skills but didn't get much chance to use them

i think o carroll could be our best signing.. him and moa starting upfront would be good for us.. 2 battering rams

Difficult to say because we didn't get much ball. I think we only had three sets in their red zone and scored from two, the other Seymour was held up on the line so thats a 66% success rate

Positives - Richard Horne is one year closer to retirement

Another one is we won't get that ref again this season

1, We scored from a kick inside the 10
2, it was a friendly

The rest i cannot really comment on as i didn't go.

We may get the ref again as he is on the list of SL refs and reffed a couple of SL games last season.

God help us all!

I would add Seymour to that, showed in patches his skills and also his defence. Green did okay and Ogre off the bench is a right handful.

Positives:

I was able to pick out the players for the most part despite a bit of a kit clash!
Shouldnt get that referee many more times
O'Carroll
McKinnon - although would have expected more pace when he broke down the West stand side
Seymours defence - hits hard, which i havent had from a scrum half for a while


Other than that, not much

Performance wise

Mckinnon - Solid debut, confident
O'Carroll - Took ball up well and impressed me.
Sharp - Busy and looked confident no real errors.
Green - Held his own after his first touch knock on.
Seymour - Looked organised and decent kicking game, looking forward to him improving.

Team wise

We didn't really attack down the left side and i got the impression we didn't for a reason, we know what to expect from our left hand side but our right side has for years been our weak link and i thought we looked to utilise and develop that side in attack when we could at times which has got to be beneficial.

You could see some structure in attack when we did have the ball, with men in motion which makes a change but we didn't really help our selves with the amount of dropped ball and penalities we gave away. so we was always on the back foot and our fitness was always going to kick in when your doing a lot of defending.

We made some clean breaks from our own half and actually looked threating near the opponents line.

Overall - No injuries i don't think and I wouldn't of thought that Gentle is going to show all his cards in regards attacking moves etc in the first game, his main aim of just getting the lads use to the new structures that are in place and improving fitness levels. i think he will of learnt more from the game and the result then if we had put 50 past them and had it easy.

Anyone that thinks we should be hitting the ground running wants to get the head out the sand and bear in mind that we have a new coach and structures in place that are going to take time for the players to settle into.
I'm willing to give them the time and i think the 1st half of the season maybe a bit bumpy whilst we settle into the new structures but after the past 4 years and more i'm alright with that.

Agreed, nicely timed pass to put Martin in too. Front row was fine, back row need to raise their game.

Aspinwall seemed to go off injured but I guess its nothing serious as it wasn't mentioned, I had not even noticed he was on up till that point.

He tried to put a shot on Lovegrove and think he caught him wrong, looked winded more than anything else

We will get the ref again this year. He went fulltime midway through last season and reffed SL from that point onwards (as well as TJ'ing games).

took an elbow to the face! came off but back on a bit later

Can you show him the bit in the rules about 2 teams taking part?

Didn't cost us the game as they were better but they scored from 2 forward passes and the only forward passes called were ours (and they were forward so not complaing about that aspect) and either we're completely indisciplined or both sides were messing around/laying on the PTB. The penalty count was so much in Rovers favour but from my perspective both sides were as bad as each other for holding down/interfering.

Not whinging as we were beaten by the better side, but it was Gansonesque in its putting loads of focus on the ref. The best refs are the ones you don't notice.

Peter Gentle got to watch the team and assess where their at. He will know what areas need work on and more likely who will play in the friendly against the Bulls. I'm positive and upbeat about the coaches ability and how he will mould the team over the coming weeks. We, the fans, should also take something from yesterday and realise that with the vast changes at Hull in staff and method of play then we will be under cooked for around 6 games into the new season(as will most teams). The positives I got from yesterday was to be patient in the team and be prepared to wait for the changes to take effect and start to pay off on the playing field.

O'Carroll.

I was in the West yesterday, the one good thing is you notice the subs more. He got bumped off by Clinton and the contact look a bit awkward. He seemed fine walking off.

I should have also added Sharp who worked really hard. Always a target for kicks due to his height so needs better protection.

Very good post, agree with everything you say.

Positives:

[list
[*McKinnon looked decent in both attack and defence. On first appearences he looks like a good signing.[/*:m
[*O'Carroll exceeded my expectations, I thought that he had a very strong game and I hope to see more like that from him. I think that we have 4 very good props (Lynch, O'Meley, Moa, O'Carroll).[/*:m
[*Apart from his first error Green had a fairly solid game, and good kick-chase for his try, which is promising for if one of our first choice props gets injured as he seems capable cover.[/*:m
[*Seymour. He had much tougher defence than I've seen from our recent scrumhalfs and showed some good ideas going forwards. Hopefully as our team chemistry improves we'll see some of his ideas come to fruition. [/*:m
[*Sharp had a good game. Made some good runs going forward and saved an almost certain Rovers try in the second half. [/*:m
[*Martin made a solid performance when he came on and finished his try well. I think he's claimed his place in the starting line-up against Bradford. [/*:m
[*Right-side defence looked stronger than last season. [/*:m[/list:u

Negatives
[list
[*Our speed around the ruck was a bit slow. We always seemed the most dangerous when our distribution was fast-paced but on a lot of occaisions our distribution at the ptb looked quite lethargic. Same for when moving the ball to the flanks, we weren't consistent with the speed of our passing. Hopefully this will improve as the players get more into the swing of things. [/*:m
[*Our left-side is easily our strongest side but we didn't move the ball over to it as much as I'd have liked to have seen. Briscoe and Manu are quality and need utilising. [/*:m
[*With the windy conditions I would have liked to have seen us try to use it to our advantage more with our kicks as it could have caused trouble to Rovers' Fullback/Wingers. [/*:m
[*Horne and Aspinwall were fairly poor. I hope to see some improvements from them as they get more match practice, but if not I could see them losing their spots.[/*:m
[*We didn't really seem to have a plan B for our attack when our Plan A wasn't working. We just carried on doing the same thing. [/*:m
[*Westerman looked a little tired playing in the middle. If this continues it might be worthwhile to have him and Tickle switch around, so that Tickle is in the middle in defence and Westerman in the middle in attack. [/*:m[/list:u

McKinnon (solid under the ball)

O'Carol (right little dump truck, should go well

)

Glimpses of Seymour (I think he will improve very quickly)

Houghton (Same standard of graft, improved during the 1st half with a quicker ptb)

Sharpe (Did nothing wrong)

Green (looks very promising)

No injuries

I thought there was a lot to take from it.

In terms of players McKinnon looks a very assured, classy full back and should go well. O'Carroll gave a very committed display and the Martin/Sharp combination looked much more solid than anything we had on the right last year.

Although we missed too many one on one tackles I was also pleased with our defensive structure, we held our shape much better and didn't leave our wingers exposed like we did last year. Also, considering the lack of possession and field position we created a few good chances and hopefully in a couple of games when the cobwebs have been blown away we will start to take some more of those, I thought the movement off the ball was pretty good.

To me Hull looked very much like a side who has changed their style of play and some players looked a little lost at times. Sandercock on the other hand doesn't seem to have changed Rovers style too much and their players seemed to understand their jobs better than ours.

Positives
McKinnon- looked good and supported the breaks well
Seymour- had a hand in all the tries
Green- looked good apart from one error
O'Carroll- some big hits and decent runs
No Injuries
Martin/Sharp did well 2nd half together.
Defence got a good work out.

Negatives
Turner- defence shocking exposes his winger to much, needs to improve or there will be no contract at the end of the season.
Westerman- Quiet game
Whiting- Struggled and I know there is a lot of Whiting lovers on here but can't for the life of me see where he is gunna play.
Horney- a bit quiet but hopefully will gel more with Seymour