We missed Fletcher and Kohe Love on one side and it showed, i thought Smith was excellent at hooker and Anthony Thackeray had a very good game. The rest showed some good touches at times and then we had poor old Scott Yates who had a shocker.


Wildbore is a fantastic attacking player but he is one selfish git, Duffy works his backside of but isnt really a loose forward but what can we do with the current injuries. Flynn was again good (why doesnt he back himself going around the fullback when he makes a break?)


Plenty of improvement left and we need some bodies back and oh boy do we need a big man up front but we say that most weeks.


Oh and Wildbore to start at fullback for Halifax.

1 Whitehaven 3 3 0 0 132 70 0 9
2 Widnes 3 2 0 1 112 44 1 7
3 Barrow 3 2 0 1 96 54 1 7
4 Halifax 2 2 0 0 50 38 0 6
5 Sheffield 3 1 0 2 60 63 2 5
6 Batley 3 1 1 1 62 82 0 5
7 Leigh 2 1 0 1 51 56 1 4
8 Featherstone 2 1 0 1 60 60 0 3
9 Gateshead 3 0 1 2 52 98 0 2
10 Toulouse 3 0 0 3 38 128 1 1
11 Doncaster 1 0 0 1 14 34 0 0

Average performance ???

Me thinks the Tetleys is kicking in
IMO it was a shocking performance and lacked heart in the first half.

We looked clueless first 50 mins too predictable and big Paddy fills me full of confidence when he collects the ball near our line .

Has he got some sort of a nervous twitch and has to pass the ball and invite the opposition to get it ??

Good player Wildbore but tries to impress too quickly with his game.

Far too light in the pack , Yates absolute nightmare of a game.
We looked nackered and nervous 1st 40 mins few daft mistakes and a bit too much 1 man rugby and bunching in parts.

Sorry to say but I`m baffled over the sudden drop in form .

Get rid of Cullen



only joking by the way

If anyone thought that tonight was going to be an easy game then they are mistaken. I wouldnt say it was garbage, Yates let 2 of the sheffield scores in through his own stupid mistakes.



We still have plenty to work on but for me i did see some positives (one was challenging for high kicks)

What were the others V man ??

the ref does not understand the concept of the ball going back and the high shot on ostick was awful, but the ref played on.

one positive was we got 3 points and played badly.

Smith ran more from dummy half than he has all season.

Thackeray also had a good game (IMO) (Cullen starting him at 6)

our defence structure in terms of numbers in the tackle has improved (although one on one we are poor)


Im not making out it was a good performance im more picking bits out that i thought we improved on. With the pack the way it is currently and out first choice centre out it was always going to be a tough night.

As ever I agree with Vikingman, word perfect.

Get a room







I think Smith had no option but to have a few runs from the play the ball due to our forwards leaving most of the gaining yards to Gaskell but it was a average performance from the pack.

I just hope all the pieces of the puzzle fit together soon and momentum will drive us forward resulting in clean crisp performance week in week out.





I`m sounding like Cullen

I agree with Buryhim, we were awful tonight apart from a spell in the 2nd half were we played quite well.

Gaskell was our best player IMHO, Gannon just doesnt break any takles, Wildbore should have passed it to Webster when he was unmarked. Yates should have been taken off earlier after his howlers. We just cannot carry players who are clearly not confident, especially with an important position as fullback.

Sheffield were poor tonight and we were not much better.

Think Cullen has got a massive amount of work to do to make us the top team in this comp.

We looked very nervous in that first half and we really should have capitalised on that first quarter where Sheffield couldn't break out of their own half.

I thought it was painful to watch for the most part, save for that spell either side of half time which saw us score all our points. Thought we showed some fantastic skill with some of those breaks..

Can't really add much to what's all been said and what's being said every week. Though I did notice in the 1st half that we were flinging it out wide earlier in the tackle from inside our own half and making good ground from it. Think we're just going to have to sit back and be patient as this team is far from the finished article in terms of performance.

An ugly win is better than a defeat.

Was it a shocker... no!!! I would be interested to see how much possession we had of the ball because it seemed like we had a lot more than Sheffield and we simply had issues converting... there was at least twice when the ball should have been carried over the line but in both instances the ball was dropped... add to that Wildbore's determination to go himself when Webster was completely in and we would have been looking at a far more comfortable score. As someone mentioned Sheffield once again capitalised on our mistakes and if these can be worked out then things will look a lot better.

Yates had a torrid time last night, all of his own making but he has been excellent and shouldn't be too disheartened. Those prats that cheered him off should be ashamed... he is a young lad and is still learning his trade at this level but undoubtedly has bags of talent and didn't deserve what I heard around me last night.

It wasn't a great performance or maybe even good for that matter but there were signs of improvement. We are still looking to move the ball around and considering our lack of forwards we weren't bullied.
Thompson looked okay when he came on.. Can't understand why Gannon played for so long before being brought off - I think he played the whole of the first half and looked decent but obviously tired.
Thackray needs to hasten his thought process... he shows glimpses and looked good at times but he needs to go with his gut more as he sometimes gets caught with his indecision.

And finally.. Webster... better performance but I got to thinking last night that had Moran been on the pitch he would have taken the game to them last night. We need to see more. Is it a case of too many cooks with Smith, Duffs, Thackray and Webster on.. at the moment all too often Webster looks like a sous chef and needs to get involved more.

We Were very poor tonight aprt from a period in the second half. Gaskill had a good game, Yates had a stinker, Flynn Played well and he done alot of work. at times when we our on other teams lines i think we look clueless in attack. postive thing know we played poor but got the 3 points.

The position he was signed for after all.

Sorry but is this not the point of peeps getting frustrated ?

Parts of the game looked as though the team was thrown together within a week.
Don`t know if Webbo is carrying a injury / no planned moves but he seemed to just pass and not linking up with anybody else.

I hope that its not a case of new training and splitting the backs from the forwards ??

If so we can see the results already . bad comunication between the lads.

I still don't think it was a shocker... even when we were down did anybody seriously think we weren't going to come back and win it...

I didn't.. we never looked like we wouldn't win. We had a lot of possession and our defence was pretty good with the one or two slip ups. We wasted a few chances which is different from being stopped and I think this led to one or two groans but if you are making chances to score and blowing it then at least the chances are being made.. all you need then is someone to apply the finish..

People might be getting frustrated but it is not going to be a quick fix..
For 3 years we have been coached in a certain way and most of the pre-season was the same.
It is coming slowly though.. someone on the other board said that it wasn't unreasonable to expect things to have already been put right but that's ridiculous. You can see from players positioning in attack etc that things are improving.

I could see vast improvements in certain areas already, yes it was close but we will starting dishing the whoopass out soon enough.

i don't think that will be happening until friday night is over

No thanks mate, we're quite happy with Miles Greenwood or Shad Royston.

To be fair I thought Doddy's performance off the bench at Halifax warranted a starting place on Saturday.

When the Yac loses it, he goes big time. Weve seen it before and he will be ack again

A good young player but after his Halifax performance somebody else should have been in from the start.

Still I thought Josh Simm was a major plus on Saturday. He did the full 80 if im right and deserves a pat on the back for that one.