Bit of a topic for the geeks this one (wheres Big Dave T when you need him

)

Now considering the Hudds pack is regarded as a strong one and considering they were fairly comfortable against Bradford I found the below stats very interesting....

Meters made

Hull - 1379
Bradford - 1336
Huddersfield - 1001

Just for some context the number of carries are

Bradford - 199 (6.7 meters per carry)
Hull - 187 (7.4 meters per carry)
Huddersfield - 165 (6 meters per carry)

Guess that really shows that Hudds defense, especially goal line defence might be tough to crack and that when they do get near your line they tend to put points on the board. If our pack plays as well as it did against Saints and we can restrict their field position I think we have a strong chance of winning the game.

Hudds pack is overated

take brett hodgson out of the game and we will be ok

Brown looked quite handy as well. They're a pretty tight unit IMO and were good last week.

I don't think they were that good, Bradford looked poor to me but still scored easily at times.

I thought Bradford's highly rated and highly paid half backs created very little. They still scored 3 tries but missed every conversion. Last season I thought Hudds were awesome in defence at KC. If we play like we did last saturday I cannot see many teams competing with us but friday is a big test

Brown for me is Mr consistant; regularly coming up with quality plays,tackles etc, he's a perfect foil for Robinson, alongside Hodgson they have some decent playmakers. As for their pack, it will give us a good benchmark as to just how good ours is.

Agree this is going to be one tough game but you got to fancy Hull after last weekend.

They did play a quater of the game with 12 men, there displine was poor last week, if it is the same this week we have to make them pay, we also need to improve ours.

They have three main players to watch (all in pivotal positions) Hodgson, Brown and Lunt. I think brown must be one of the most improved Sl players in the last year.

Going to be a hard game tonight, very tight and could go either way.

On paper I think we have a better pack and much better halfbacks, they edge the backs IMO, mainly due to exeperience. Pack must set the platform like last week for the halfbacks and backs.

Quietly confident of the 2 points this week, saying that i didnt fancy us at all last week.

Thought our discipline was ok last week. 10 penalties (Including Tanseys non penalty sin bin) factor in that refs do give the benefit of the doubt to a team who is behind on the majority of occasions (be it subconciously or not) then our penalty count wasn't too bad.

Wasn't that impressed with Huddersfield last week, like someone said earlier, stop B. Hodgson then it will go a long way to stopping Huddersfield. Hopefully our pack will over power theres, especially the front row.

If i recall meters made wasnt an issue for us last year, it was strike rate in the oppo 20. Was pleasing at Saints that it was pretty good when needed but was more impressed that we scored a couple of long range efforts too which had been missing.

Good stats though, keep them coming, i like a fully informed view.

Have to keep an eye on Shaun Lunt, very good player imo.
Will be in the GB set up sooner than people might think.

Looks good, better than Scott Moore who everyone raves about. Goes to show that there is a lot of potential in the National Leagues.

The Hudds pack is not that good, it's their defence that makes them so hard to beat. The Bulls had a lot of ball 2nd half and Hudds were down to 12 men but they still could not break them down. They also lost a prop (Mason) early which will have effected yardage. If our pack gets on top and we kick well then we should dominate territory and ultimately win the game. Brown and Hodgson are the players to watch.

Could well be both of GBs future hookers on show tonight with Lunt and Houghton. Would compliment each other really well too imo.

Watching Boots n all this morning, it seems they play two lines in the backs when defending - first line (2 players) comes up quick to snuff out the move in the backs and two sit back just in case and are then supported by others sliding across. I think you must have to be super fit to keep this up all game so if we hammer them down the middle it might make them a bit looser out wide at the end of each half when they're tired and can't afford to shoot out the line. Get ready for a lot of work of the middle tonight - a few more 5 drives and kick.

As always... talking b0ll0cks.

A slightly more worrying Stat for us at the moment is the number of offloads we have made in the 2 games so far. We have only made 12 offloads so far from 401 carries which is 0.02%. We are obviously playing an error free style of rugby at the moment which is to be expected but hopefully we will see the players promoting the ball more often once conditions improve.

Not to confuse things here but an offload is classed as passing the ball when being tackled isnt it? Maybe we have just not been tackled!!

If we hadn't been tackled we would have scored 401 trys

Fair point.

Take the clean breaks off the carries and then divide the offloads by the number of times we've been tackled to get a truer % which is still going to be something like 0.04% at a guess.

Think Agar is telling them to play it safe for the time being and when you consider the weather it isn;t such a bad thing. However we did score a cracking try from an offload in the Saints game.

Huddersfield tackle well and do a good job covering man and ball in the tackle, we should get more opportunities to offload on sunday.

I think possibly the conditions may have played a part in this. I actually envisage with Long we may see some champagne rugby as the pitches dry up and get faster. Also as we gel more and become more confident as a unit

Agree, as a guess i'm sure that the error rate and competion rates would have gone against us had we tried more offloads in the conditions and at this stage of the season. Happy with tight wins for now.

Saints wasn't a tight win, we played some good rugby during that game (well i think we did) and if not for the wrongful sin binning of Tansey we may well have nilled them.

Not many teams will put a big score on Hudds no matter what the conditions are and i felt we tightened up a bit after going 12 in front.
We did what we could not do last year and that is hold on to a winning score and play smart football. Tickle taking an age to kick, kicking for the corners to slow the game down and eat away at the clock etc. All those things came together on friday night and played as much a part in the win as the two tries did.

Interestingly enough, if you divide the number of play the balls we've had by the number of kicks we've made in general play then number you get is 5