As Douglas Adams said. There's a lot of emotive reactions to tonight's game, but I'd just like to give my balanced view. I don't think it fits into any of the existing threads so nerr.

Ref: bloody awful. I thought they were trained that if the ball pops out of the completed tackle it's probably reefed. Not tonight. I was watching the pitch markings and he was retreating 12 not 10. Gave us nothing. Nothing. Amos's try looked perfectly good to me and I was looking down on it. We got nothing tonight. Nothing.

Us: I thought we were mostly good. Muscled well - Hudds' pack is huge and we sized up, made yards, drove them back, hit hard and showed the passion we've been after. Unfortunately we harked back to 2005/6 with suicidal penalties at times, can we not cut these out? Handling errors can be partly forgiven, it was very greasy tonight, but still frustrating. Our defence was solid, even when when some tackles were missed others scrambled well. They made how many breaks?
Going forward I thought we ran good angles, good dummy runners, overall we ran well and showed good hands. Hate to say it but Tomkins cost us two tries tonight - both 3-man overlaps on the right and he went himself. He's a talent but he has plenty to learn.

Hudds: Superb defence. We ran well but Hudds' defence was awesome. No gaps at all. They covered our every option which is why Sam's mistakes when we finally worked a couple of overlaps has cost us. Let's not pretend they're an automatic 2 points any more, this is a good strong side who will turn plenty over.

Overall, bitterly disappointed. The ref caned us but we couldn't turn possession into points - but credit to Hudds' defence for that. Good to see some passion as well.

Quality post



There's been a bit of an over-reaction about how poor we were tonight. I honestly thought with 7-8 minutes left we were going to win the game. We got s***housed by Bentham, I'm glad someone else noticed him retreating us more than 10!!

Absolutley nothing i disagree with there. All this season we've seen them lose and deservedly so, but for me the ref(and his two side kicks) were awful tonight and in my opinion didn't just cost us a possible win, but also a better game to watch.

Seems to me when confronted with the negative tactics from the opposition we had no plan B. Well there is a surprise.

No use blaming the ref as once the oppositions tactics become obvious different tactics from us should have been employed.

Were they?

Dave

Erm, what?

Huddersfield did what they always do - a big, rough team who will always try and batter the opposition. Are you trying to say we didn't know that? I'd say the way we tore into them at times says otherwise. Our forwards made yards, battled well and took it to them, just as they took it to us.

And yes I'd say we changed tactics - we threw it wide a lot more, we had dummy runners all over the place as the ball went to the centres and as I've already said, we created at least 2 3-man overlaps that Sam wasted. Our only try was from this move, as was Roberts' disallowed try. So yes, we tried to go wide and unfortunately Hudds' defence was just too good - let's not ignore that.

You must have watched a different game to me then. We've got forwards who dont run the ball in at the line they jog sidewys with it - with the exception of Feka. Our play the ball/getting the ball out from dummy half is so slow compared to the top sides. And when we do get the ball out far too many passes are either above the head or round the ankles.
Add all these together and you get performances that see us beat by wakefield, castleford and huddesrfield etc.
Who is to blame the players or the coaching staff. That is for others to decide. But what I do know is if we keep playing like yesterday we will be lucky to make the 8, which will be disastrous and if that happens there needs to be a complete overhaul of staff at the club.

That's one of the things that was very frustrating - every player should have been going in to the tackle thinking "They're going to try to reef it / pop the ball out" - I could see it, the crowd could see it, why couldn't our players?

I also felt that we never really tried for the quick play the ball - we were quite happy to let them sprawl all over us and mess us around. One way you can counter that is by forcing yourself up and playing the ball - we were content with moaning to the referee (who was clearly not going to do a thing) and playing into Huddersfield's hands.

I think one thing you cannot highlight from that performance is the forwards.

With the exceptions of Bailey and feka.

Agreed on this form we will be out of the CCup next week.

any grapple tackles or owt last night?

yeah a few went unnoticed

A lot of truth in that post, can't comment on the refs decisions till I've seen more video evidence. Both defences were very good, they had to be at 8-10 with 6 mins to go.
Refereeing performances have gone downhill since Cummins took over and they won't get any better until Cummins makes them accountable for their decisions, but they do a very tough job which none of us would like to do, so we've just got to deal with it. All Cummins will say is "the ref didn't make you drop the ball, the ref didn't make you knock on etc etc".
Every team is going to get tough calls now and again but lets just get on with it and enjoy the game we love. See you all later, down at the "pharm" for round 2. Good luck till then.

dont be daft! this isnt a good assement at all, we are dire, no passion, no urgency, cant even play basic rugby, a team playing like hudds we should have blown away last night, they did nothing special nothing more than 5 drives and a kick, and we couldnt handle it, you cant blame the ref, you play what is in front of u, no matter what, the fact our players and our coach dont have the ability to see that is the problem here. we where playing for penalites they whole game, why we are playing like a bunch of fooballers is beyond me. oh look im ranting again, the club is in dire straights, ive never seen a gulf between the fans and the club as big as it is now, we will still turn up because we are loyal, i have no idea how to fix this but somthing needs to be done before the club dies

Well said mate

Not good enough simple as

Agree with most of that.



Yes, we tried up the jumper, throwing it about and fighting and none of it was able to counteract grapple tackles and holding down. A strong ref tonight would have seen Hudds penalised out of sight.

a good opposition tonight might have given us a game

I'M FED UP WITH ALL THIS BLAMING THE REF

we dropped the ball 3 times over the line
we dropped the ball severasl times in the red zone
we refused to try anything different all game
no scoots from the ptb
no early kicks
no 40-20 attempts
no offloads from anyone bar hock
we had a man advantage for 10 mins and still looked clueless

to me - we showed a lot of our usual failing. we play well fo 20, dont convert possession to points and then start losing composure.
when weve played well this year, its behind a good pack display, and a lively hooker performance (both were missing)

the fact is saints, leeds would have hammered hudds with the possession we had.
the ref wasnt good - but he wasnt the reason we lost. we were worse

I'm not in a state of panic.


Much worse that that




I've started to not care that much!

from both sides

I completely agree.

I'm extremely disappointed with losing the game last night but things are nowhere near as bad as some are making out.

You dont reckon having our worst start to a season in over 20 years, losing at home to cas, wakey, hudds isn't bad.
I mean we beat Salford ffs, bradford who will probably never play that bad again ever, n were lucky to beat quins.
You not wrong its nowhere near as bad as some are making.

There is no panic.

You can't win games with poor completion rates like Wigan had last night as you can't build pressure. It wasn't the refs fault we dropped the ball, but it ws his fault for allowing them to slow our play the ball and reduce our momentum.

Either way, if we had a half decent compleion rat we'd have won the game.

The panic comes from the fact that our completion rate most weeks is poor and does not seem to be improving.

If you could see an improvement in standards then I would agree but Nobby is quickly running out of players to drop to try to improve matters.

It's true we're up and down, so yes consistancy is a worry.

If we were not competing in games then there would be panic, there are problems but not panic stations.