I'm angry, what went wrong? Where do I start?

Dropping the ball on the 1st and 2nd tackles?

Giving stupid penalties away on the 4th and 5th tackles?

Getting scored on out wide when playing against 12 men....... Twice?

Forgetting what the basic fundamentals of attacking Rugby League are, ie. passing, catching and running with the football?

What happened to the team that played it's heart out at Fax? What happened to the team that gave Warrington a damn good game at Cougar Park, won heroically at Mount Pleasant? Anyone who saw the recent debacle at Sheffield will know this isn't the first time this has happened. We absolutely got everything we deserved, nothing.

Today we came up against one of the better teams in the division. And you know what? We contained them in defence pretty well, their 3rd try was a beauty, I don't mind conceding those. So we had the slope and a 14-0 deficit to turn overn it looked do able, they didn't look a class above us like Fev or Fax have. We even created some decent field position. But then in the final 20 we never looked likely to score until Neil Cherryholme runs a beautiful angle through a gap and then loses the ball in contact. I'd love to know what our completion percentage was, it must have been below 40% at a guess.

I actually got the chance to see some of the game tonight on TV, turned on after about 25 minutes at work, then watched between calls.
I'll just say that most of what I saw wasnt a pretty sight. Turned over to watch Bolt run in 200, and didnt bother to turn back.

I guess the results this year suggest that was a bad days work, but...?

awful game.....
from a Leyther.

Agree with everything said by Stealth in his post PLUS Playing against the Ref , I thought i'd never see a worse Ref than Ronnie Lawton but I did tonight , Infact all three officials were a total joke.
That added to a ton of handling errors and constant laying on from Leigh , Elbows in the face , constant cheap shots in the tackle , Offside at virtually every play of the ball by Leigh and the list goes on , a nightmare of a match from all angles......
Don't anyone accuse me of sour grapes as I didn't think Keighley deserved the win....they were worse than bad tonight.

Onwards and upwards.

I've just got home and watching the recording.... 15 minutes in and the ref said we knocked on with no evidence on 2 occasions... not impressed.. now 19 minutes in poor communication from the ref resulting in us being penalised... I'm feeling a bit hard done by so far.... obviously we didn't help ourselves later in the game, but I would have liked to have seen us at least lose fairly!

On the ref, Jamie Leahy is usually a very good referee. Was at the Northern Rail Cup final which he did very well, so would like to think tonight was an off-day.

He over-used the video ref tonight, but didnt when he should have with what should have been a penalty-try when Danny Jones had the ball kicked out of his hand when been tackled 2 on 1 late in the 1st half.

But the ref cant be to blame for the handling errors Keighley made.

Leigh did what winners do - slow the opposition play as much as the ref will allow then get fast play of the ball for themselves or win penalties. It's up to the ref to police this.

They were getting bodies in the tackle and hands on the ball, the ref obviously believed there was no "stripping" but it looked very close to the line to me. One thing is for certain, we wont beat good teams like Leigh by repeatedly coughing up possession.

We had the opportunity to come back at them and blew it by simply failing to keep hold of the ball.

As for the Danny Jones incident, well I'm amazed. It happened right in front of us and looked like a Leigh player kicked the ball out of his hand as he put the ball on the line. The least the ref could have done is check the screen.

Most frustrating game I've watched in a long time.

Lets not blame ref,s, its like blaming other kids when yours has done something wrong.
Danny Jones too slow, missing tackles and not taking control.
Sam Obst just not taking on the line enough which was picked up by Brian Noble.
Forwards didnt look intrested.
Coleman created nothing and is too overwieght.
We have found our level and that is 6th in the table.
Great achievement after comming up from Championship 1.
Lets all be realistic, see what the new season brings and stop looking towards ref's for excusses.

From my point of view I'm not blaming the ref, I'm blaming us for not adapting to his judgement as well as Leigh did. Ref's are only human, they all judge the time allowed in the tackle slightly differently and it's up to players to push this to the edge to gain as much advantage as they can.

As for the Jones "no try" incident, I think it's a reasonable question to ask.

Pretty much agree with the rest of your comments.

Think there's some reasonable comments above, but off the pitch can I just say that a small number of the Leigh fans were an out and out disgrace last night. It was a simple case of beer in, brains out and their language was disgusting. There were children of varying ages around me and when challenged about their behavior they didn't even have the good grace to apologise or acknowledge. In their eyes they did nothing wrong and then continued as if to prove a point. I'm sure this isn't representative of the Leigh fans in general, some of whom appeared embarrassed at there behavior. I'm all for a bit of banter between fans, but when every other word is swearing to me it crosses the line.

Something isnt right with Danny Jones, not firing on all cylinders and just overall playing pretty bad predictable rugby. Shame really because I quite like him as a player, but he's gone donwhill since returning from Halifax. Coleman needs more 80 minute match experience but he needs to replace him now, am i right in thnking Jones is the only player signed for next season (and Paul March?).
He does create order on the field, but a half back should be performing better on attack than this, I hope he improves.

This may be controversial to some but I dont think Obst, Korkidas and Demetriou will be missed as players next year. Obst may well stay, beacuse i dont think any other team on his current form will want him.

Looking forward already to next year, i'll be happy with mid table. We need stability now and hopefully Paul March is that man, plus if you need a fridge delivering he's your man.

For mine Jones should be regarded as an out-an-out scrum-half next year. Ideally a fit Coleman at stand-off and Obst competing for hooker. March loose forward, assuming we get some size, speed and power in the rest of the pack.

Poor poor game one which should have been an opportunity to raise next seasons fans yearning for more!! Last game of season at home and on the Tv. Shame we were so bad. Still not sure who chooses MOM but really?

Leigh fans ( not true supporters ) what came out of some of there mouths wasnt acceptable -we were stood with the kids and asked them politely to refrain from using fowl language and just got further abuse- mentioned it to the steward and he wasn't prepared to even say anything to them- Cougars this needs sorting out -Stewards are scared to do anything when confronted by loud abusive supporters, I'm sure we are not the only family with young children who don't want to put in this situation - they should have been asked to leave

Danny Jones had another bad game - why is he been selected or don't we have another fit option?
Sam Obst - I personally thought he had a reasonable game
Way to many ball handling errors again -
Referee was bad as well - but no excuse

You obviously not watching the same Danny jones everyone else is watching- since his return from Fax he's not the same player. Slow and half of the time not interested in the game - same play time after time - the other team know what he is going to do which puts other players at risk.
I would say Jones is one of the players to be departing( don't know how that effects his 2 year deal) but if your not upto it

to keep him

Its like groundhog day at CP.We are so predictable its unreal.

Jones and Obst do not click together,always moaning at each other.
James H ,as good as he is never gets a look in.

At least Leigh tried to throw it around a bit and mix it up.
As for there fans,never heard any swearing where i was stood but outside the ground while i was waiting for a lift two of their fans were having a right ding dong just before they got on the coach back home. You had to be there

some quality intellectual musings there I'd guess .....

As a "neutral" but one who would have liked a Cougars win, I think that the main area you should be concentrating on is giving up so much cheap possession, dropping the ball, and conceding soft penalties.

Cougars started well, and had a reasonable first half, 14-0 down was doable.

Started off the second half very brightly with some good repeated pressure, but the bad habit of coughing the ball up, and playing panic plays instead of knowing when to just take a tackle was what cost them. If they had got over for one, more would have followed, but they couldn't steady themselves.

The ref was not the reason Leigh won. He gave Cougars plenty of decisions too. The scoreline was no reflection at all of the play, but was what happens when you can't complete a set of six. Mind you probably the worst decision of the evening was Colin's mission to cross the ground and try to get Nobby, who was live on air, to do the half time draw! But tbf he didn't drop the carrier bag . . .

Don't disagree with any of that. I came away thinking we'd done a good job of beating ourselves.

Well here goes
Have had my first season as a season ticket holder for cougars, mainly followed fax as this is my hometown.
Why cougars?
Origanally I came with a friend to watch the final when cougars went up.
I was impressed by the lovely atmosphere at cougar park, more friendly, down to earth and very supportive towards your players.
That day i saw Danny Jones and lots of fans going up to him and welcoming him back to the team and patting him on the back, saying how much they had missed him, I thought how fantastic. He has said it feels like coming home a big admission for a Halifax lad and a compliment to Keighley.
I have always looked at the forums and didn't like it when after a bad game players were singled out and torn to shreads.
Yes I hear you all say this is a forum and everyone has a view.
Please please don't get like other teams, stay true to your players they will all have bad games, I'm sure they are their own worse critics and i'm sure they do read these comments, Famous quote " if we live with encouragement we learn confidence ".
Imo too much rotatation too many half backs signed they don't get chance to gel if you read the fax forum it's happening there and they played together at batley.
In a previous quote about playing for Wales not helping, Wales have one of the best coaches Lestyn Harris also our own Barry Heaton, who has only just lost the title for consecutive goals in a season, as assistant coach and one of the best half backs ever,Lee Briers, training him, how can this not be benificial.I think both Danny and Craig Moss can only grow in strength from the extra input.
I feel that Paul March will lead the cougars well, we may miss some of the Wakefield "big players"but this is only the first season in championship I for one think Cougars have done really well and am excited for next season "Cougars" not at the top but not bottom either.

Finally sign up to "The Pride in the Red and Green" i have and intend to encourage others too. Lets keep it friendly I love "Cougars", players, fans and all.

to be honest i think the biggest problem was 6,7,12 and 1 all went missing. defensively you weren't bad. the only real aggression in the team came from korkidas and jermaine ray. seemed the only 2 that wanted to really mix it. none of the pivvits wanted to take on the line, they all just wanted to over play pass , pass for passings sake. thought you got some bad calls. thought the score flattered leigh. jones would be better at fullback. jermaine at standoff, seems to have a bit more flair but as i said the biggest things missing were the pivvits and agression.

the fact is that if you drop the ball you wont win any games we wernt great ether would say we were at probably 60 per cent on our game bt tbh diddnt need to be better really. the other thing is the gate how do you pay players like obst korkidas and cherryholme on gates of 800 to a 1000 there was at least 200 of us at the game so where are all your fans !

With regards some of our signings, 2 or 3 came through our squadbuilder program, then players like Korkidas, Tadulala and Paul March were pretty much signed on mates rates by JD. The "Man City of the Championship" moniker we were given was completely unfair.

The fans thing is concerning. The Premier Sports deal doesn't help, our gates are down by about a quarter we play on TV. The amount of folk from Keighley who are Leeds/Br*dford/Huddersfield season ticket holders is shocking, and don't get me started on the parents who are bring their kids down to our game but dressed in Super League merch it's galling. We cannot compete with them at all, in Br*dford's and Huddersfield's case their season tickets are similarly priced for more games in better facilities and guaranteed better quality rugby because of the closed shop that is Super League.

Yup! You don't need to be a genius to work that one out - it's been our biggest problem all year


I simply don't accept that, not that I want an argument, but if you had seen your defence close up they were working at 110% and blowing like steam engines. If we had managed to keep hold of the ball and seen our sets out, the sustained pressure would have seen a different game. But it's all "if's and but's", we've done this all season. You were the better team on the day, no argument.


Korkidas and Obst were give jobs in the community working with kids. Some of it specialist work working with "difficult" kids that the schools can't handle. They are seeing it as a step to careers outside rugby. Tadulala came to put himself in the shop window for SL and is on match terms only. I would imagine Cherryholme is on no different terms to any other forward in the division.

With all the dual reg. players you use are you going to change your name to Wigan reserves?