Totally agree , a very scrappy game we never seemed to get out of second gear , Thunders last try was a good one , but our defence was non existent for it , to many mistakes in the opening quarter , it was one of them games , hopefully back to our old selves for the Bradford Cup game .

The below quote is from a month ago and "that" was Whitehaven's try in Round One:



Sticking by that after watching today. The first 15 mins belonged to Newcastle and they looked really dangerous down their left edge. In that time Leigh knocked on at least three times, including the cringeworthy drop from "Safe Hands". Thunder responded to our score and went ahead before Leigh started to stretch away and an HT of 22-6 was fine by Bongser who had predicted an FT of 62-6 on the Superleigh site.

He may type his thoughts on the second half when he has finished counting how many places he has dropped on The Predictor. He may run out of fingers and have to take off his socks - had he done that in the Tynesiders' dressing room at HT things might have been different.

Definitely a below par performance but still a comfortable win against a hard running team with some pace about them. Is there room for improvement-certainly- not least in cutting out ridiculous mistakes like letting there restart bounce over the in goal. An obvious worry us should Joe Mellor get injured but we are beating decent teams well without yet hitting top gear over a full 80 minutes.

I think if Joe Mellor was injured ,maybe Hingano could replace him , I think he has promise , as you say the letting the bounce go dead was a mistake , the same p,Ayer missed the tackle for Thunders last try , but these things happen , a below par performance , but we still won , I like Reynolds link up with Nene they seem to be getting used to each other .

Wish we'd had a no fly zone in the second half as they were a threat aerially. Sure the North Stand was warm in the pre-spring, early KO sunshine but said sunshine led to mis-trackings of the ball when it was on high and to opportunities for 'Castle.

First half, yes Nene's try came from a trademark catch, roll and shove after a ball was lofted by Ben but on two prior occasions when in a position to contest high balls he seemed to be more concerned with pushing oppo players away from "Ground Zero" to the benefit of the Geordie catcher.

Bongser just didn't get that at all.