: Sat May 23, 2009 7:57 am  

The most depressing thing was that once Salford scored it seemed inevitable that they would win. Never for one moment did we look as if we could comeback.

Really this was a match we should have won without playing particularly well. We should have scored on at least three of the plays where we lost the ball over their line. For the first hour Salford looked a poor team. However there always appeared to be a fragility about our defense in the middle of the park.

After 14 games including the cup we've had two very good wins, two good wins and 10 disappointing performances. If the Leeds/St Helens performances reflect a realistic level of performance for the team, then there is something badly wrong with the attitude of the squad.

Alternatively those were freak results and the current league table does not lie.

: Sat May 23, 2009 8:44 am  

Bully_Boxer wrote:

We are carrying too many passengers at the moment and surely if McNamara is in charge for Wakefield he will drop some players? What has happened to Deacon? He looks well past his best and despite being a good player for us over the years, he needs dropping.

I'm not one to kick a man when he is down & while I have enjoyed the schadenfreude I have laid off Deacon this season compared to previous. He has been a loyal servant, no doubt, but one intelligent enough to be quite aware of his limitations. Not many seem to be picking up on the correlation between playing behind an awesome pack & giant, athletic backs, compared with a bunch of dinterested muppets. With the amount of time & space they created any HB, even decent amateurs, would have the opportunities to look good. Fortunately for Deacon he was blessed with a world class kicking game, which he had every chance to use as the vast majority of games you dominated opposition 20m lines.
Now he doesn't have the luxury of time & space he is shown for what he is - someone without the natural speed or talent to cope at SL level. Without that time his kicking has gone to pieces. I don't think other teams have suddenly realised this & are signalling him out, they just get far more chances to do it now. When he should be stepping up & leading by example he seems to be shrinking into his shell, knowing he doesn't have the ability to do anything about it.

: Sat May 23, 2009 9:34 am  

af wrote: Match report FM if Stuart Littler can score against us, we have no hope

af wrote: Match report FM if Stuart Littler can score against us, we have no hope

: Sat May 23, 2009 10:38 am  

Do u think that you have some sub standard quinns offcasts amongst your ranks???

Sykes and Worrincy 2 of the Bulls top scorers are 2 of those.

: Sat May 23, 2009 11:15 am  

Apologies if the comment has already been made (I don't tend to read the pages and pages of posts after a game), but I've seen a lot of comment about how our signings have been poor and not good enough.

I would like to make the suggestion though that the poor performers in our side are not the new signings. In fact, the two players I consider to be performing the worst (considering what we know they have both done in the past) are the ones who've been here the longest.

There's been plenty of comment already about Mr. Deacon, who is no doubt in a really bad run of form. The other would be Jamie Langley. He is still pretty solid in defence and I struggle to criticise that side of his game. However his attack is absolutely pointless. It's exactly the same run every single time he gets the ball. Collects it just inside the dummy half and runs in a straight line to the nearest defender, making no yards after the collision and never ever offloading.

It's got to the point where I wouldn't even give Langley the ball. Just leave him on the field to defend (which is undoubtedly what he does best) and pretend he's not there when attacking.

Such a shame really as only a couple of years ago, he looks like he was going to be a England/GB regular for years to come.

: Sat May 23, 2009 11:40 am  

Your last comment there says everything about the current coaching set-up. Players who looked like being more than adequate replacements for the core squad of the glory years have gone backwards so fast they're nearly folding in on themselves.

As Chairman Mao once said 'The fish rots from the head down', and Bradford's season is starting to smell like a month-old kipper.

: Sat May 23, 2009 12:16 pm  

ex Bull Dog wrote:

FM if Stuart Littler can score against us, we have no hope

As a Salford fan I agree. He is truely awful and just isnt SL standard.

: Sat May 23, 2009 12:31 pm  

Not much to add to the previous comments except I don't think it is fair to highlight one player for criticism because they all made errors at times. Sherrife took a few knocks and perhaps it's not surprising that he was not at his best.

Highlights of the game for me were Bentham getting knocked over by the Salford player and the chanting at the Salford mascot 'do the social know you're here?'. A bit of light relief on another depressing night.

mac : Sat May 23, 2009 12:40 pm  

mac for the sack lol

: Sat May 23, 2009 1:10 pm  

Johnoco wrote:

chanting at the Salford mascot 'do the social know you're here?'. A bit of light relief on another depressing night.

The exchanges between the two mascots during the first half actually made it difficult to watch the match (and I don't mean that in a bad way). The two were quite entertaining, so most of our fans were trying to watch both that and the game itself.

It's a shame they couldn't carry it on in the second half, as I would have welcomed a distraction from quite a bit of that.