Utter shambles, it was as bad as I feared. Just thankful that Hiku missed four kicks and Rovers were not brilliant.

Nu Brown largely anonymous, no ideas going forward, discipline awful, Pele looks a hothead and players going down like ninepins.

I can see Pele picking up 3-4 games, EseEse one match and SAo given his record may cop a ban too.

No positives at all last night. It looks like it's going to be a long old season.

Looks like we’ve signed three Lauakis and a Sam Obst as it stands. Long season ahead.

The performance did have a very strong 'Agar era' vibe.

Just a shame we don't have a Willie Manu to throw it too

I know it's the way he likes his team to play, but I think the team really didn't look comfortable playing Tonyball, we shouldn't be trying to throw it round at every opportunity when we don't deserve to...the players confidence was shot last night and they looked nervous chucking it round on the 1st/2nd tackles so much and it led to mistakes which then put more pressure back on us. We should have gone back to basics when it was obvious plan A wasn't working, radders style 5 drives and clear the lines to calm us down and keep rovers off our line. Can't remember a game where we've put so little pressure on a teams line. Any sort of good position we had was spoilt with a knock on on play 1 or 2...don't think we kicked into their in goal until Cam Smiths kick through in about the 74th minute

Another issue was the lack of a real leader out there last night, someone to calm the team down, refocus them, adapt to the sending offs, this was a big flaw in Smiths recruiting in the off season...nobody in that squad is true captain material

Haha yes the only item in the playbook - the Manu Miracle

Well the “doom and gloomers” amongst us weren’t wrong. Absolutely nowhere near good enough. I honestly don’t see where our wins are coming from.

This proves Pearson is picking the players to sign. Smith would never go for the dross on show last night but as is rumoured Smith on huge money and wants one last payday. You can tell he doesn’t care, he is a dinosaur and all this loving stuff and players best mates don’t work, it didn’t at Rovers. Pearson storming out at the end was a bit hilarious though.

Pele was obviously riled by something, but what a silly thing to do when it was always going to get seen on the cameras, Sao should have known better but it was a grubby act by Parcell, (was there even a gouge in there), who should also get a ban . I thought Ese Ese's was instinctive, so maybe he'll get a fine .
But abject attacking and soft penalties seem our trademark this year, and the lack of halfbacks was never more evident against a team that had two very good ones. Hard to see where we can improve though with Truman not ready and after a bad injury, he won't be at the races from the get go.
We definitely need a lottery winner to buy us or I fear its a return to the Hetherington/Agar era.

The Pele red card was an absolute joke. Not sure I’m going to be able to follow this game much longer……

Bingo.

Why did we actually sign Walker? We had a good quota fullback in Hoy and a promising backup in Littenn...if we were planning to release Hoy then fair enough but I don't understand why we've signed him, feels like the Briscoe v motu tony situation again. Maybe the Walker money should've gone on an extra second row

We're already as bad the Agar era, he finished 11th, 12th, 6th and 8th (some years had 14 teams) I make that to be an average finish of 9th so not any different to our last two years.

Just seen a clip of the Pele incident. He threw another punch at Lewis in the melee too. Don't think we'll see him for 6 weeks at least

Similar to Dylan Napa in his debut for Catalan a couple of seasons ago

I think he is a good full back and we are thinking longer term as he's only 24. Hoy has a lot to prove, but he looked ok off the bench last night (though it wasn't hard to look better than some of the starters)

The other damning factor for me last night was the effect that abject performance will have on the fanbase.
A crowd of 20,000, plenty of pay on the day spectators. A fantastic opportunity to attract and regain fans
How many of them are going to come back after that?
Even a pass holder of many years said last night that they were thinking of giving their pass up.
I also found it disrespectful that Tony Smith couldn't even be bothered to do a post match interview on RH last night in order to explain that performance to the fans and apologise.
The good will towards TS will also wear thin if this continues.

He is a good fullback, but just feels like when we resigned Fonua, we signed him because he's available, not because we needed him.

I agree. I think this is the worst squad we've put together in over 20 years. The really worrying thing is our better players have terrible injury records. Thankfully there's no relegation but unless some of these kids turn out to be stars this could be the norm for us unless we get serious investment.

Pants pulled down again on the big occasion , Hard to see any thing learned from Last season or since they all returned in November .
Total mess .

It was a red for me, 15 years ago it probably wouldn't have even been a penalty but thanks to the likes of Fozzard and his mates the rfl are terrified of any potential law suits so any contact even near the head will be a penalty (which is a big reason fans are leaving the sport in droves, its sanitised crap compared to how it was). They'll 100% make an example of Pele and maybe even Sao so not expecting to see them for a few weeks.

Agree with Steve a few posts back, we lack a leader, you could see we where fired up (too much) by trying to hit them hard, resulting in a few penalties, needed someone to calm the forwards down.

Real lack of composure.

Not a fan of 'Uncle Tony' - wasn't overjoyed by his appointment at the time really. Brought in a new tackle technique last year which doesn't work. Hasn't sorted the discipline out. No real style of play. Pretty poor.

Carlos needs to be hanging his boots up. He will be a big earner, quota place, needs to go ASAP and get a half back in. Your quota players are very important and you need to get value out of them - Hoy was on the bench with seemingly no position for him, and Carlos is a sick note, who won't take a jab to get him on the pitch (heard that any niggle he has, he refuses to play)

Ooops not that one. Meant the second red!

As many have said , You just cant see were the points are going to come from . Last night we had players running in to the back of others , Then players stood in the line blocking the pass out wide . The completion rate must have been below 50% . I know we are in a rebuilding phase , But AP must be livid with the result last night as are we .