Looking at their games so far, I think it’s fair to say that London are still a bit of an unknown entity in SL. Rivers need to be on their guard & can not afford to take them lightly otherwise there’ll be an upset.
That said, I think we have too much grunt up front, even if Tomkins doesn’t play, and believe we will win by 12.

When did we change our name to rivers LOL

Very important game for us, in terms of getting off on the right foot in 2019.

I’m more confident than for a while that we might win the odd game here and there against the top teams this year, but if we’re to climb the table we can’t afford to lose many of the games we’ll start as favourites.

Goddamn autocorrect!

Generally a lot of points scored when we play these. Bit of speed in the backs. Think I read Cunningham injured? If so that's a help as he always plays out of skin against us.Ioane at prop always catches the eye and is a handful. I like Masoe's take on the match and agree treat them with respect.i fancy us to win but it's rarely as simple as that with The Rovers.

Looking forward to the game, my first chance to see us play in the flesh. No idea as to how They will do but we will know tea time Sunday.

I wasn't quite as impressed with Rovers at Warrington as most people seem to have been.

Too many errors and missed tackles presenting easy points to Wire and a lack of cutting edge on attack. Quinlan has been missed badly and we have players like Linnett & Drinkwater still finding their feet. I also feel we are lacking genuine pace meaning we won't score many from long distance.

This is why Warrington were able to win by a good margin without playing particularly well themselves.

The spirit is there which is a good foundation and of course Mitch Garbutt has been absolutely outstanding. Good job too because Mose has been let's say 'mixed' and Mulhern yet to find his form of last season. Hauraki defending OK but not touching the ball much and crucial errors costing points in both games.

We have a good record against London and a 7/10 performance will probably be good enough. Good opportunity to get into some form before the far more difficult proposition of Salford the week after.

The reason we lost last week was 2 missed conversions, 1 dropped bomb and an intercepted looping pass. We were also down to 2 interchanges. All in all we weren't far off.

I see Abdull as a concern from London He may not be the most mobile but he's tactical and kicks well.

As for us, Lawler can cover Addy, if Vaivai doesn't play, Linnet will start at centre. No Tomkins is an issue but we shoukd have cover.

So...Atkin or Dagger? All the signs from Sheens indicate Atkin and he's probably right.

If Atkin has a shoulder problem then you would think now would be time for Dagger?

Yes. No point fielding an injured player right now. That said, it is a must win game (we need to be winning games like these, preferably comfortably) and Atkins could do with shaking off last week in terms of his confidence.

We may not have been far off last week but Wire certainly were. Could they have stepped up if necessary? It was a pumped up Rovers vs a flat Warrington and we still lose by a good margin that is what disappointed me.

If (say) Wakefield or London had done the same how impressed would anyone have been?

It is very early days I am not writing Rovers off by any means but the last gasp win against Hull puts a veneer on things and we could so easily be 0/2 with alarm bells ringing.

I expect a very tough encounter against London I don't think we will be able to snuff them out like Salford did. We should be able to win the game though and hopefully build up a bit of fluency before we meet the Red Devils ourselves. That game will be the acid test if we really are very close to where we need to be we won't have to worry but for me we must improve a fair bit yet.

To be fair we have 6 new players that need to gel so were not quite the finished article yet (hopefully)
What bugs me though is that year after year we seem to miss more tackles and drop off more tackles than other clubs, we never seem to improve in that area. We all know the team can score points and we scramble in defence well but the amount of missed/dropped off tackles will always hurt us.



hkr 38 - 22 broncos

We made Warrington look off because of good pressure and asserting ourselves in to the game well. Even some of their own 'fair minded' fans will acknowledge this.

To be fair when one of the 'little' teams plays well against or beats one of the 'big' teams its because the 'big' team had an off day and never because the 'little' team played well.


Well thats what the experts always say anyway haha.

Spot on.

A wins a win I suppose scoring early didn’t seem to do us any favours because we were crap for the rest of the half Cunningham outplayed Drinkwater Atkin should be in the halves and I thought Dagger went well Masoe is becoming a luxury we can’t afford Garbutt went well again need a big improvement next week but I don’t want to take anything away from London who I think will be a lot better than people were predicting pre season

Straightforward enough with the game comfortably put to bed by three quarter time. With Salford demoralised we go 3 from 4 into March. And although we have four games out of five away next month we should be building nicely as most are against teams we should be beating. What a signing Garbutt is proving. Hats off to getting him on board.

I bet the Leeds fans are not happy we have garbutt hope he stays fit great player

Really poor attitude from the players today, it looked like they'd gone out with an its only London attitude, but this side isnt good enough to be like that.
I said in an earlier post about us missing tackles and dropping off them, i bet were close to 40 missed tackles today.
Great to get the 2 points but a massive step up in effort needed.

Fair play to the London fans that came, made a lot of noise

First half really looked like a relegation battle we were dire and London should have been further in front. Had they gone for goal when they had the opportunity they would have been but half time 4-6 definitely flattered Rovers.

Opening 20 minutes or so of the second half Rovers looked like a different team. Defence - we decided not to let London run the first 10 meters unopposed as we had done in the first half and there was more energy on attack. Suddenly it was one way traffic and Mitch Garbutt produced 2 superb finishes Craig Hall got another after good work from Vaivai.

22-6 after a quality spell of rugby and Rovers decided they had done enough for the afternoon. Cue firmly in place on the rack London got another after excellent work from Abdull and Rovers seemed happy enough to see out the game at 22-12.

London will be relegated I have no doubt, things will only get more difficult as the season goes on. Rovers sit in a play off spot which may well produce optimism to match that of the 28-14 defeat at Warrington.

Rovers really DID play well for about 20 minutes today and we won the game . The fixture list has been kind for the opening weeks and we seem to be getting the breaks we haven't done in recent seasons. We are nowhere near where we need to be IMO but with 2 wins from 3 and a home game v Salford next week, yes I would have settled for that.

Not a bad sign (wining while not playing well)? My first live game this season & I really don’t know how good or bad we are. At times our half back pair looked like they have had a fall out & wont talk to each other? Early on after that first score we threw the ball around like we were 30 points in front with seconds to go! Will be back Saturday but I haven’t a clue as to what I will be watching.

Well, that was a proper toilet performance.

Bad points:

Our kicking game is shocking.
Our defensive effort for the most part was lazy at best. VaiVai had a defensive nightmare.
The team looked like they were just going through the motions for most the game.
The number of unforced errors was disappointing.
Why we haven’t learnt to put an opposition kicker under pressure yet, especially after Sneyd almost kicked us to death is beyond me.
And why have any player on the bench only to use them for the about last 6 minutes, especially when it’s Atkin who is arguably our most potent play maker.

Now the good points:
Dagger (as most fans suggested is a better natural fit at FB).
Garbutt, great performance again. Looks a better signing every game.
Hall had a decent game.
A win when playing that bad is a bonus.

What is this often repeated horse sh#t about Masoe. A luxury, lazy. People seem to believe this nonsense based on his performances for Saints.
If he's lazy why has he lost 10 kg plus and why do we dominate when he's on the pitch. When he went off we had our worst spells. He took two hit ups in the first set and never stopped. He defends like a brick wall and the opposition attack avoid him. He also attracts lots of defenders in decoy runs.
It's repeated as fact this rubbish. He's been out second best forward behind Garbutt so far this year.
London will go well barring injuries. Their halves outplayed ours. McGuire's kicking game is awful Drinkwater needs to be allowed to run the games. It was Masoe and the forwards that won the game today.

Mose is lazy because he takes up the ball 6 or 7 times per game. Garbutt 25-30.

It's funny to see a couple of Newcastle Wests juniors from the same neighbourhood - Mitch Garbutt and Luke Yates - go up against each other on the other side of the world.
If they hadn't got ESL contracts, they'd probably be both playing for the Rosellas next weekend.