I know its a positives thread, and I agree with many of the comments posted so far.
However. I am so worried about Richard Horne being one of our primary pivot this year. The lad is an FC legend there is no doubt. However this is a professional, highly competitive sport and I really believe hes been given another years contract out of sentiment. He dropped off far to many tackles yesterday, 2/3 years ago he rarely missed a tackle. He offered very little threat going forward either as a line breaker or as someone who could give the killer pass or kick.
Before anyone suggests he is given a chance because this was the first game of the season. I think people should reflect on the last 2 seasons on how ineffective he has been. Yes he has some good try assist stats, but last year he probably made twice as many attempts as most 6 or 7's at that final pass or kick because he was our only option. If you were defending your own 10, who would you prefer to be defending against, Briers, Lomax, McGuire, Green or Horne?!!
Bottom line is I don't think he should be anywhere near the starting 13. I hope Mr Gentle can see what he offers and plays his best 2 pivots. If Rich Horne is the best we can do as a number 6 option then I think we are heading for another mediocre season.

Steve

if we get him let pray that we are on Sky and the video ref get the last say

Radford made some good metres

He was given 2 years

McKinnon- looked the real deal and solid
Seymour- looked what we have missed and in a match were not throwing tons of changes at he will go well
O'Carroll- looked awesome, knows how to hit hard thts for sure
No Injuries
Martin looked very good and classy when on, also knows how to stop doesnt he
kicking was average
but hey its our first run and looked sloppy all over, but thats what friendlies are for , no points in friendlies and we will be better for it against Bratfud

There may be a clue in his [url=http://www.therfl.co.uk/referee/full_time_match_officials/tim_robyRFL profile:[/url

Town:
Leyland/York

Occupation:
Philosopher



Career Honours:
Grade One Referee 2010
Grade One TJ 2009
International debut Serbia 2009
Super League touch judge debut 2008
First Team referee debut 2008
Wigan Match Official of the Year 2007
Champion Schools 2006/7
Club (Leyland Warriors) and school captain (player)
Lancashire Service Area 2004 (player)

WFT puts their occupation as philosopher?

Probably a philosopher?

Bulls hitter

I am really bemused to see many people having a right pop after one pre season match that did no go the way they wanted....................

Get used to it Rome was not built in a day and we are in for a long hard season

Do you know many who are not yet dead?

In the eyes of David Brent - Dolly Parton

Apart from increasing our offloading game 500% he's made no changes.........

Only Tim Roby.

Alain de Botton.

Agree with all that. I hope he proves me wrong but I was surprised when the club announced a two year deal. I know it was only the first competitive game in pre-season but I got the groundhog day feeling from Horney on Sunday. That said, the kicking ability to find one of three men in around 2 acres of grass 9 times from 10 is some feat of consistency !!

I'd add Houghton to that , thought his first 15 minutes were as good as i've seen from him. He'd really sharpened up his distribution from acting half , much faster and more accurate. Martin will do a good job as well.

The biggest negative despite O'Carroll's excellent performance was the inability - again - of our pack to dominate a mixed Rovers 6 where you'd have thought we should on paper at least hold the upper hand. The sum of the parts of our pack just doesn't ever seem to add up to a dominating performance. As a consequence Dobson had all of the time in the world to do whatever he wanted as usual whilst we were hurrying last tackle plays and kicks.

TBH I thought we closed down Dobson more than we have in recent times, Seymour seemed to pick him out a couple of times. I think we were undone more by offloads by Paea and the defence being too tired (from the 1st half efforts) to back up for second phase defence.

My main concern was our defence in the middle as Houghton and Heremia were clearly getting targetted by Rovers front rowers and not having Fitz in the middle to protect was a obvious miss.

What frustrated me about Houghton, is when Paea was picking him out, he was tackling him round the chest! He should be round the legs with another guy on the top to take the player down. Paea was just driving him backwards, twisting his upper body due to the size advantage and popping an offload away which had us scrambling

All tackling up top is what's in today's coaching manuals, they're even coaching the youngsters to tackle this way. Invariably, there are two men in a tackle, so why not one up and one down ? Seems the old adage of not being to run without your legs is no longer relevant. I understand the need to keep offloads to minimum but on Sunday we gave away a good two or three metres in a tackle whilst the momentum was stopped.

At one point in the game, someone had a hold on one of his legs and he still made a couple of yards, can't remember who or when it was, I'll look out for it on HKR.TV

I rememer that & IIRC surprisingly it was O'Meley.

In the words of Kris Welham, Paea is a "massive human".

Regarding tackling technique I personally dont have a issue with us surrendering a extra 2 yards as long as we end up with a slow PTB the problem on Sunday was that we would give up these extra yards after contact but not control the floor.

I agree we actually managed to get a hit on him 2 or 3 times which is 2 or 3 more than usual but that fact remains that our pack do not dominate and despite being talked up haven't done so for some time. We rarely get a roll on and seem to find it difficult to prevent the opposition from doing so. Until they do everything else will be done off the backfoot. Quick ptb for them , slow for us.