sure I counted 7 tackles!

Welcome back Webby

You did daveyz you sure did.

Even Bentham did, why else did he run out to stand with the Catalan line unless it was the hand-over?

The man is a disgrace. A professional ref who can't count to 6

Add to that stopping us from taking quick taps but its fine and dandy when catalan did it, used to like catalan but with fray-bentos in charge they are a dirty bunch of players.

How bentham missed what was going on us beyond me, has to be so they don't miss out on the playoffs, hope leeds, wire and wigan knocked 7 shades of crap out of them now.

Was L'Estrange targeted? Sure he got taken out a couple of times. And I also counted a seven tackle set of six from Catalan.

Well done Bulls, you thoroughly deserved to win, and were the better and more committed team. Catalans unfortunately were given everything, and sadly it just proved too much in the end. No calls for the Bulls, everything conceivable and much that wasn't conceivable given to Cats, including extra tackles, missed basketball passes, alleged charge downs from 50cm, sending off Kearney for the last 7 mins, and of course disallowing the winning try.

Rarely has there been such a one-sided one-eyed officiating performance. Catalans, who disdain the notuion of playing the ball either anywhere near the mark, or with the foot, were not offside once in 80 minutes, nor did they strip the ball, nor did they hold down a single player. So credit to them for such wonderful discipline.

I suspect a lot of discussion will centre around Phil Bentham's performance but I think the players deserve a lot of respect from today.

Massive amount of effort and really put their bodies on the line against what was still a big Catalan side. Really disappointed with what the result means for our season but at the same time so pleasing to see so much pride back in our shirt. Thought Lulia and Purtell had possibly their best games so far this year as well. How we came away with nothing from that game I don't know but we had chances to kill the game. Hopefully in 2014 we will make a few personnel changes that's will see us winning a few more of these tight games.

Also try explaining to a newbie why Brent Webb can foul an opponent (L'Estrange) with a cheap shot but stay on the pitch but BK commits a technical foul and goes for 10 at a crucial point. Doesn't seem fair does it, but those are the rules!

Oh dear.

Thought the same charge he was taken out off the ball a couple of time, but they didn't happen obviously, wouldn't say he gave them everything, we did get some calls, can't believe the amount he missed funny how I don't think we got a penalty in their half so we could kick for goal.

I think something extremely dodgy just happened out there. Or something extremely incompetent.

Well played to the boys though. They can go out of the play offs with their heads held high. Proud of the effort today. You can't compete against some things.

I am aybserloutly gutted for the team the management, and us as supporters. Again the game has been spoilt by an incompetent refereeing team who have no idea of the rules or so it looked. Off the ball incidents, blatant off side, moving off the mark, 7 tackles and as always forward passes.
The RFL may wonder why the support level for League is going down and why they cant get a paying sponsor to support SL for the past 2 years. LOOK at the standard of referring as it is killing our fantastic game.

Bradford deserved much more today and have every reason to feel P*)&^D off the ref has decided that we will not get to the top 8, too many teams have seen their game spoiled by crap and incompetent refereeing.

Can't help but think that Catalans moaning about disciplinary helped them today. Bentham wouldn't give any remotely contentious decisions against them. No real complaints about our performance. Just one of those games where bloke in middle had a massive influence on result.

Potentially. I think he was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was on the end of 2 or 3 hospital passes during the first half which didn't help.

I thought we had done enough to win at 22-16 up with 11 mins to go to win but we blew it a bit. Sure, we didn't get the rub of the green in anything from the ref but our inability to close the game out cost us. Our start to the second 40 mins was predictably slow and we let a crucial soft try in. The sin binning was probably justified but I didn't think it had a massive influence. In the end we lost it up front where we lacked the size in the pack to compete for the full 80mins. There was hardly anything at all between the sides though.

Some observations

1. I'd like to see the challenge on L'Estrange again as it looked a bit late and a shoulder charge.
2. Amazing to see not one offside at the PTB or scrum with both sides stood offside all afternoon. Does this rule no longer apply?
3. Does the flop rule no longer apply either?
4. Someone should tell Leon Pryce how to be gracious in victory.
5. Henderson is a world class whinger.

I thought most of the team had good games. We missed L'Estrange after he got taken out.

Thought we played the second half as though too many of the players had booked holidays for the first week of the play=offs.

I was sure that we had grounded the ball in goal for what was given as the Catalans 1st try. Or was I seeing things?

No! I was sure Kear grounded it first but given the lack of protest by the players I thought it must have been ok. Would like to see it again on video.

We were not allowed to take a quick tap for reasons that were not clear to me! Then why were Catalan allowed to take a quick tap when one of their players was still clearly offside?
Oh and why were the bars behind the stand shut again?

No expert here but regarding the quick re-starts it is my understanding that if a player takes the ball on the full HE can have a quick re-start providing all his players are behind 20 yd line. If a player allows it to run dead no one can re-start quickly until defence line especially is set. This was the reason today, we let two balls roll dead, quite rightly but we couldn't take a quick tap. Cats defused two bombs and the player catching the ball can take quickly if his players are on side.

I think this is correct and could make some peoples criticism if Bentham wrong in this regard, as this seemed to be a big gripe. FWIW I thought the sin binning of Kearney was probably correct all things being equal

Yes and regarding point 4 Price exerted more effort in celebration than he did the other 80 mins. Glad we did not sign him when it looked like we had a chance last year. He is lazy and slow most of the time. Loved the Lulia try when he brushed passed Whitehead. Sammut had one of his off games he`s either brilliant or rubbish

Think the issue with Sammut was most of his minutes were in the 2nd half when the pack couldn't get on top and we were in our own half.

Agreed Bullseye, while Bentham did us no favours we should have been out of sight and still cannot believe we lost that game. I'm sick of taking an early lead, looking comfortable and then switching off and letting a team back in. I think just about all the other top 8 teams would have kicked on and put Catalans to bed by the hours mark.

Think Cummins got his tactics horribly wrong today. Apparently he put Sammut on the bench for his performance last week. I was at that game, now while Sammut wasn't brilliant, he certainly wasn't the worst player on the pitch. Gale was very poor and was responsible for two of our to opening tries last week. So don't understand why he singled out Sammut.

Langley, never has, never is or never will be a second rower. He just cannot pass. Put him in the middle and let him work. He didn't have a bad game today but there were a couple of times where we had an overlap and is inability to pass cost us.

Finally what do we do in video sessions. Every week we seem to start well, let the opposition back in, panic and lose the game. It all well and good having character and effort (although that should be a given) but to get in the top 8 you need to use that thing in between the ears and control the game. This is where Gale and Sammut earn their money, sadly they haven't done it yet again. If Gale had have kicked into touch against Widnes instead of a fancy kick from outside of the boot and Sammut had have booted the ball in to touch instead of chipping it straight into Whiteheads hands, then maybe we would have 4 extra points. Not good enough from the half backs.

It was a good effort today, tough, hard game, but if we want to get into the play offs we need to be smarter and more clinical. Can't keep blaming the referee (As bad as he was, certainly needs to answer the late shoulder charges from the Dragons players)

Still yet not convinced about Gale as our long term solution has more average games than good ones for me.

The last two games have been against teams with much bigger forwards. Last week our pack managed to gain parity, this week we eventually ran out of steam.