Good start from Barrow. Getting a roll on. See what these young guns are made of now but they have done themselves proud so far!!

Yeah, Barrow right on top now...

I think Barrow will now put 40 on the board. There forwards are so much stronger. Margin looks very lazy and unfit.

Has a bug gone through Bulls camp?

Both Magrin and Roche have been bang average

Game over.

Fat lads love playing against us. Murrell last week, Smith this week. Moving Smith to 9 has killed us off.

Another injury. Keelan Foster helped from the field now.

Honestly, watching the game, I can see why Magrin has been farmed out. No disrespect to Barrow but Magrin shouldn't be beaten in contact every single time. Every tackle he has made I don't think he's been dominant once.

Young lads have been solid today. Attack needs work but looks like they want to throw it around a bit. Few offloads which is nice to see.

I think Pickersgill/Green have given Kear something to think about for the halves.

Don't think Roche is quite up to speed, give him a pre-season under us and then I'll make my judgements.

Done well to keep it below 30 so far!

Also Bustin doesn't look fit to me so maybe explains Kear dropping him.

40 unanswered second half points. Dreadful second half performance.

Bloody hell man it's a team virtually full of kids. Barrow came out with intent and it inevitably became men against boys. Good future for plenty of those young lads though.

Blimey, it was like watching Sunday all over again. One up rugby, ineffective kicking, opposition soaked up the pressure in the first half, then screwed us in the second.
Agree about our "experienced" forwards being poor, Bustin needs a dose of army training to bring him up to fitness.

A game of 2 halves tonight. Barrow turn on the style in the second half to kill off the young Bulls. I felt it was a fairly even opening 40 mins but we fell away badly during the second half and the more seasoned Barrow players took advantage of some tired defenders.

I thought Brown looked quite handy until he went off injured. Doyle also caused a lot of problems. Tough game for the young lads.

A lot of positives to take from that. We showed up well in the first half. Barrow came out with real intent that second half and we just couldn't stop their momentum. Losing 2 players to injury didn't help the young lads either. Most of the squad will have never played at that kind of intensity that Barrow played with in the second.

Green, Scurr, Butterworth, Doyle all look like they have bright futures.

I personally didn't think Bustin looked as bad as others do. He played decent minutes in which being one of the few more experienced players (I say experienced, he's still only 21 FFS) Barrow obviously smothered him straight away. Put a few more experienced heads around him, he'll give us the go forward we're lacking at the moment IMO he's not an 80 minute grafter, he's someone who will punch holes in the defence. We have plenty of grafters at the minute.

Was disappointed with Roche.

To be fair Roche seemed to be on most of game although I only had one eye on game to be honest

Well, that ended up going the way most of us expected.

I'm positive about it, to be honest. We matched them first half, they obviously got a well-deserved 'hair dryer' from their coach at half-time, and came out with real intent. From that point it looked like what it actually was - a game of men verses boys. They had some big lads who took advantage of tiring young kids towards the end - a couple of their tires were actually fortuitous and made the scoreline look worse than it really should have done.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of Scurr, Green, Culling and Doyle. I thought Bustin did reasonably well, but Roche was anonymous and Margrin can go back to London Skolars for mine.

The question is, I guess, whether will we see any of these lads again this season? Given that we aren't getting relegated or promoted, I hope we will see a few of them drip fed into the first team over the coming weeks.

Matched them first half, but injuries, tiredness and their experience told in the end but I thought we didn't disgrace ourselves.

Kear reckons Keyes, Hitchcox, Evans and Gibson should all feature in the reserves next week. That’s going to make a big difference getting them all back at once for the business end

Wow, that is fantastic news! Apart from the Gibson bit

If we can get them back to fitness and pick up a bit of form then we could have a really strong end to the season.

Ryan
Hitchcox
Webster
Evans
DFG
Lilley
Keyes
Crossley
Willie
Kirk
Farrell
Minchella
Wood

Flanagan
Roche
Peltier
Storton

Given the disparity in experience we did well to stay in touch with them as long as we did. Once the injuries happened it was always going to be tough, especially losing a back and a forward. As the game wore on we were going to tire.

Absolutely cannot see why anyone feels the need to whinge after that performance.

Yes agree with that,similar to what I've said above.

This cup appears to be voluntary as evidenced by the sides not taking part. So given we've opted not to try and win it, you have to ask why we entered it in the first place.

Circumstances?

I also wouldn't be sure that the RFL told everyone the full plans before they comp started. In fact, I am pretty certain the RFL didn't have full plans, and winged it.

Crazy and weird aspects included
(a) no prize money. Not a penny for winning it. You're not apparently even allowed to sell the trophy for scrap. I think maybe the winners now get an hour each on a sunbed or something, or I might have made that up.

(b) no idea what to do if a club qualified for both CC Final and 1895 Final. So far as I know when that became a theoretical possibility, the wheeze was that you wouldn't play in the 1895 Final even though you qualified, and the team you beat would get the "benefit" instead

(c) having to play a major QF so postpone what could easily be a crucial league game, send part-timers to play on a short midweek turnaround and then back to a 3rd, league, game at the weekend.

If we had have been knocked out the Challenge Cup by Keighley (nearly happened), or Featherstone (even more nearly happened) or Leeds (was expected by most) then we'd have not only had one or more 'free weekends' to rest players, but would have played Barrow on Sunday with our full squad.

It's just the way it worked out...