walker did well for them in his 1st spell - but other than that, they didnt really make a lot of yardage forward apart from with penalties.

Yep Walker had a good game.

What were the pens and error counts?

Penalties were 6 each .Don't know error count though.

6 each seems low, but I did think that the ref was quite good (or Australian) at the play the ball.

See Brucie your playing the generation game again.

Did your dad tell you all of this Brucie, because as a 3 year old, you wouldn't have been around when Rovers won anything.

I did think that they dominated through the middle. The stat suggest we were second best there, too. If you look at the 4 props and LF for each team, they made more metres, whereas Ellis and Tickle made more than their backrowers, and our centres also made more metres than theirs, which goes a bit against them making most of their metres out wide. I also think that they had quicker ptb speed and more control of the ruck in general for long periods. They just generally looked more aggressive than us IMO.

The error count was 12-9 Rovers.

Interesting re the stats which I'm certainly not contesting. It's just that they didn't seem to spend very much time near our line at all even in the first half (or us theirs - it seemed fairly even). I think in terms of the game view the packs were pretty even. I'd put a bid in for Walker mind as he was the best prop out there in the first period and the main reason they may have seemed to edge the middle. I know they wont sell but it might annoy the little bloke who runs that club.

Was a little disappointing that, especially with both tries being virtually the same.

I think the first half was fairly even territorially, but I think some of that came down to our kicking game being good, and also a lot to do with our our back 3 and centres doing some excellent work early in the tackle counts. They also seemed to drive us back a few times, which I don't really remember us doing all that much.

Love it! viewtopic.php?f=59&t=556097&tsmp=1376307527

Love it! viewtopic.php?f=59&t=556097&tsmp=1376307527

Just read some of Sandercock's post match comments, and he says about them missing 8 players. Genuine question, which 8 is it, and how many of them would actually make their team when at full strength?

I mainly ask because he always manages to slip such things in any time they lose, but they usually seem to be an exaggeration to me, as well ignoring any similar adversities the opposition are facing. By my reckoning, they were probably about 6 positions short of first choice (and that's classing O'Hara still as a first choice player), and we were 3 down, plus arguably Horne and Galea to make it 5. Listening to Sandercock you'd think we were at full strength with them struggling to put a team together.

No charges for anyone who got yellow carded yesterday - all got "sin bin sufficient" - although its difficult to see how getting sin-binned in the 80th minute can be regarded as sufficient punishment www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/disciplinary

No charges for anyone who got yellow carded yesterday - all got "sin bin sufficient" - although its difficult to see how getting sin-binned in the 80th minute can be regarded as sufficient punishment www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/disciplinary

I can make a case for ...

Lovegrove>Griffin
Welham>Salter
Paea>Beamount
Withers>Carlile (not that I'd agree with that, but CS sees it the other way)
Patterson>Cox
Horne>Hepi
O'Hara>Netherton

It's hard to really miss O'Hara when he's played so little for us. Also, Welham has missed a lot of action too, and Salter has played all year and effectively Gleeson has now filled the Welham void. It's all about the relative squads really, and ours isn't the biggest. But, having said that - we still managed to field a fairly balanced side without playing players out of position.

Quote ="Diogenes"No charges for anyone who got yellow carded yesterday - all got "sin bin sufficient" - although its difficult to see how getting sin-binned in the 80th minute can be regarded as sufficient punishment www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/disciplinary'" it'll still be a black mark against his name and will influence future disciplinaries against him, of which there will be many!

Quote ="Diogenes"No charges for anyone who got yellow carded yesterday - all got "sin bin sufficient" - although its difficult to see how getting sin-binned in the 80th minute can be regarded as sufficient punishment www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/disciplinary'" it'll still be a black mark against his name and will influence future disciplinaries against him, of which there will be many!

regarding Rovers' first try, I was sure you're not allowed to throw the ball up in the air then run under it and regain it, or is that just an NRL rule? Or am I imagining it completely?

It was fine, he regained possession, you could have tackled him without the ball.

James Smailes agrees with me - Whiting was one of only three players to get an '8' rating in the paper. Not sure if this strengthens my point, or weakens it!

Forgot about Horne.



Agree about O'Hara though, it's hard to include him when you've never really had him. Also, could Beaumont keep him out now?

I'm not saying you don't have things to overcome, but IMO the way Sandercock goes overboard about it just makes it seem like 'poor lickle us' bleating. Like I said, there's a case that we were missing 5, it happens to all teams.

That's just a 7 with the 'Sir Richard Whiting love-in b*****ks' bonus point.



In all seriousness, I'd perhaps agree after he moved to the wing and got us out of a hole. Before that though, I really didn't think he was that much better than any of our other forwards, who were 6s almost throughout.

I saw it a little differently to that, unsurprisingly. He was rock solid in defence and worked hard in attack, producing some decent offloads. He's never been a big tackle-buster - that's not his game - so he did all that could have been expected of him to a very good standard. He made three silly errors, but I'd still argue that the first penalty was harsh given other similar (or worse) incidents that went unpunished.

I did, of course, consider the possibility that my love for all things Richard Whiting might have clouded my judgement a little, but then I dismissed the notion as being so preposterous as to be unworthy of being entertained further.

CS is a serial whinger, and throughout his tenure @ Rovers has bemoaned about refereeing decisions, injuries and pointing out the other team's audacity to be able to field internationals. It does look/sound a bit small time I agree. In his defence though, we have had some poor calls go against us (esp recently) but he is young and naive with the media and hopefully will improve next season, but needs to curtail things like 'we had no right to compete'. I think that's twice in a few weeks he come up with that gem. Our team was the bare bones in places, but we had more or less a close to first choice 1-9. The forward pack stepped up to the plate and we were more than competitive. Our only genuine weakness was on the bench.

Bit of a roundabout argument the O'Hara/Beamount one. As Beamount probably wouldn't have played nearly half the games he has, had O'Hara actually been fit. The flip side of that is, then Beamount probably wouldn't have had an option of moving to Saints next year. So would we have looked to give him game time over someone is off at the end of the year (assuming Beamount accepted our offer) etc. Both leaving in any event now, so maybe we should be playing/using James Green more.

Whiting was good again despite the penalties he gave away. His offloading game is one of our best attacking weapons at the moment and he currently is standing well above all of our other forwards in that regard. Has to start on the bench at Wembley purely for his utility value.

If that's true it's surprising how often he pokes his nose through the line. He has the ability to beat his opponent with the lines he runs. I don't think you're overstating his performance/ability - in fact of late he's actually been getting some 'neutral' accolades amongst commentators - not before time.