See you all tonight, hope its a good game!

Kearney must be good, you named him twice lol

Plus not so sure how you have rate Halley so highly, yes he looked pretty good last season but is that enough to call him a consistant performer at a high level?

Looking forward to tonight myself, will be my first chance to catch a game so far.

Has the team being named yet

ok my old mucker where do i start?

ok lets look at the journey men, add to your list reardon, nero, worrincy, godwin

so thats reardon, nero, worrincy, godwin, Sheriffe, Platt, Sykes, Sculthorpe. that more than a few holes in your squad plugged imho.

kearney could go either way, all i will say is chris thorman was awesome(maybe the best player on the pitch) in jjbs testimonial in preseason 09 when fc beat leeds and we all know how his season went?



the players i mentioned, deacs, morro, newton, burgess. deacs he was the bulls, its heart, its captain its leader on and off the field. morro and newton your pack leaders and burgess your best player and hope for the future. dont disrespect them by saying orford and L'Estrange who have been off the plane a month warrent a mention in filling that void, that will take time. even menzies despite his true professionalism has only been here 12 months and is really only here for his last pay day.

lynch and langley are still around i will give you that and the return of reardon is a plus.



ellis wasnt the same thing at all! ellis wasnt leeds best player, he was one of many awesome players, imo burgess was your best by a mile. leeds were back to back champs when gaz left and was out of contract. burgess left early from a team that couldnt make the playoffs, thats the difference.

like ive said mate you could have a massive season, i dont think its a rosey as a few of you think but probably not as bad as i think! as seen as i recon you could well miss the play offs again. you said yourself on the bulls board that there are 9 teams that could finish anywhere from 3rd to 11th.

its gonna be a cracking season thats for sure!

sorry to all you robins for derailing your thread!

What's your definition of a journeyman? Of those players listed I think Nero, Worrincy, Sykes, and Reardon have only played for 2 clubs including the Bulls.

TBH I think only Sculthorpe can be given that tag. The rest may not be top quality but they're not "journeymen" as they've not been through a host of clubs.



You could apply the same thinking to Brett Delaney or any player at this stage of the season.



Deacon was past his best in the past couple of seasons. He's not been the player he was. Hence the need for change.

Morrison was barely on the field for us last year and Newton was very inconsistent being good or awful sometimes in the same game!

Orford's going to be better than the late model Deacon. Anybody in their right mind can see that.

Hall on the field is going to be better than an injury prone Morrison and by all accounts Newton's attitude won't be missed. Having L'Strange as a dummy half who's played with Orford before should help things gel.

As for Burgess, on paper he may have been our best player but he rarely showed it for us last season.

Things may take time to gel but given the way we played at times last year you'd have thought that we were playing with a completely new sett of halfbacks and hooker then too!



You said Reardon was a journeyman a few lines above? Make your mind up!

Reardon and Nero aren't journeymen imo. And you've even stated that the return of Reardon is a plus.

Newton wasn't the heart and soul of our front row, never mind our pack or our team, he was lazy for the majority of last season, not the typical charecteristics of a leader imo.


I don't think we'll be top four, top eight is a must imo so we don't get accustomed to being a club out of the play-offs and I think we can manage top 6 if our team can gel well.

I suppose you are right about Burgess, but you know as well as I do there would have been no point in keeping him if he didn't want to stay, so we got the clause (which was more important than the 250k imo) to hopefully get him back a better player.

I don't think that it's as rosey as many think, but I'm going to keep my feet on the ground, no we won't top the league or win every game, but I hope we see a bit more passion and pride and a lot better rugby league from our new playmakers.

[uRovers Line Up[/u
Shaun Briscoe
Peter Fox
Kris Welham
Michael Ratu
Liam Colbon
Paul Cooke
Michael Dobson
Rhys Lovegrove
Scott Murrell
Scott Wheeldon
Clint Newton
Matt Cook
Ben Galea

[uBench[/u
Chaz I'Anson
Michael Vella
Josh Hodgson
Liam Watts
Ben Cockayne

Another fringe/reserves team then.

6-0

Cooke Try.

Rovers go 6-0 up after 13 mins with a Cooke try (boo!) and Dobson goal.

Both teams sounded to be at full strength to me from what I heard before the kick off.

They're obviously resting senior players Mills and Fisher so they're ready for Salford.

Bradford equalise after Rovers conceding four successive penalties. 6-6.

Bulls now 12-6 up, Galea off after two mins, susp ankle injury.

now

Rovers 6-12 Bulls

Galea off with ankle injury.

Hopefully just precautionary.

Part of the main reason I think this game is silly to have now, should that injury be anything that takes more than 10 days to recover KR will lose an experienced senior player for the start of the season all because of an ill timed friendly.

Ar5e, could be costly for both sides this, Bradford lose Kopzcak and Reardon.

I'Anson scores, Dobson goals, 12-12.

18 - 12 Bulls ..... Whitehead try, Sykes goal.

Who?

Finished 18 -16

No idea ..... Galea as knee strain according to Chris Park, not too serious.

Ellliott whitehead is a good young player..except it wasnt him who scored it was james donaldson.

An 18 year old with no SL starts to his name. Sorry, I though Bradford had put a full strength team out.



Sounds like Bradford's patched up team did pretty well.

whithout a doubt your a first class divvy

4 errors in that:
- Capital "W" needed
- It's "without", not "whithout"
- It's "you're", not "your"
- And you need a full stop, assuming that you've finished.

Don't get mad with me just because Rovers are 0 from 8.