Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:19 pm  

After the blanket coverage of the Aussie league and then being confronted with this, just shows the massive gulf between the 2 leagues.

How ever much Sky are trying to be positive, truth is, the quality is absolutely abysmal.

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:34 pm  

Rusty.
I don't read too much into this game
Need to win but more about clearing out the cobwebs.
Ratch still class.

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:37 pm  

fez1 wrote:

Rusty.
I don't read too much into this game
Need to win but more about clearing out the cobwebs.
Ratch still class.

I can accept rusty, but this is terrible all round from both sides... Like amateur hour.

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:00 pm  

We were awful first half, and deserved to be 12 points behind and under pressure. The try saving tackle on Garbutt by Ratchford turned the game in our favour. Our bench props helped with Philbin's go forward, and Akuaola putting points on the board at a vital time. Second half was much better, especially defensively, but far from perfect, with finishing the game off strongly being a good sign for the future. We still need to be more creative in the opponents 25, as this is the real frustrating facet of the team this season.

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:11 pm  

Sign of a good team that batters an opponent without having to get out of 3rd gear.

[Winslade's Offload]

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:15 pm  

I suppose it was their first game and having to play non stop rugby lends itself to making mistakes.

I thought Gelling worked hard and seems to have found his feet. I would have preferred to see Walker and Ashton on a bit earlier in the second half as the game was surely gone as far as HKR were concerned. Walker seems to have put on a huge amount of muscle and it will be interesting to see how he goes during the season, he certainly looks the part.
Probably the most worrying aspect of our play is the inability to open up defences when we are close to the try line. There is nothing worse than watching the lazy drop off ball to the next player, it screams " I haven't the faintest idea what to do ". It's hardly surprising that we have scored so few tries this year. Surely with two decent HB's Price can engineer a bit more creativity ?

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:16 pm  

Rusty overall as expected given 5 months without a game. First half completion was poor and second half we took control and scored some impressive tries! Ratchford and Cooper really impressed me. A tad to conservative with the ball in hand at times, we still need to see more from the Widdop & Austin combination.

Next week against Huddersfield will be more of a challenge for sure!

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:48 pm  

Both sides were 2/10 in the 1st half. Wire upped it to about 4 or 5 in the 2nd, while KR fell out of sight.

As a supposedly top level game of British RL, it was embarrassingly poor.

Any casual sports fan with a recent Sky subscription, who has been watching the NRL for the last 2 months and was intrigued to take in the British version, would be wondered what the hell they was watching... It also doesn't help that Sky's crowd noise seems totally out of sync with what's going on on the pitch - The Aussie TV got it done well and the recent football games have been dubbed reasonably well. Tonight's effort by Sky was distracting at best.

I know I appear negative and we should be made up our league is back up and running, but this is a great chance for our sport to get some new followers, with live sport being so limited right now.. Tonight's game and overall production wasn't a good advert.

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:31 pm  

I’ll admit I missed the first few minutes when Hull KR scored, but what was with the love-in for them by the Sky commentators? All about how enterprising they were in moving the ball, with Phil Clarke appearing to say they were the best team in SL to watch? By the time they caught up with the reality of the scrappy quality of the play from both teams we were told that Hull KR were “entitled to be scrappy”

Re: Today's game. : Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:30 pm  

It seems Hull KR have thrown the normal approach out of the window now relegation is off the cards for them. They wouldn't approach a game with that style of play if they could go down, that's for sure.

Warrington were very rusty but the quality you have in the backs shone through. I think you're lucky you had Hull KR up first as a better side would have capitalised on all the errors and been two or three tries up at the break. Ratchford looked classy for you today, the key challenge for you this season appears to be how to have Ashton, Ratchford, Austin and Widdop on the pitch at the same time when there are only three positions in 1,6 and 7. It seems Widdop will be undroppable, but you might be better off without him or Austin.

Sky need shooting however. Phil Clarke's talking up of Toby King was weird to say the least. He's a solid SL level player, but by no means a top player, yet he twice referred to him as being 'the brightest star in Super League or similar. Is Phil's brother his agent? It was just odd.