Ive talked with several acquaintances I've made over the years since the game who are neither FC or Hull supporters and their views on the game were interesting. Well I watched it back today and boy Rovers were good in the first 15 minutes. We looked all at sea but they really put us to the sword and if you stopped the Sky replay there and asked any fan of the game what the predicted score would be It would have been somewhere between 50 and 100. They were relentless.
But then something changed we picked up a bit I admit but Rovers suddenly descended into an arrogant grumbling petulant rabble and their attitude suddenly affected their ability to complete. despite numerous injuries a paper thin squad and kids all over the place we soldiered on and although we got sucked into it a bit at times our rag bag of youngsters players playing out of position and absences through injury outscored them for the rest of the game. The number of uncompleted sets was interesting too. I watched closely what they were doing, shouting at the referee all the time waiving their arms around staying down in the tackle to delay the game and goading the crowd and our players .
Now I grant you We've had our moments of that sort of stuff over the years and a character or two as well, but the rest of the team usually acted to sort it or as was the case with Connor isolated the player, but with Rovers on Saturday it was endemic throughout the team and the Captain should have settled it all down and got them back in the groove except he was the major protagonist.
So they scored just a solitary consolation try near the end and for times we had them under the cosh mainly because they were so preoccupied with their overall attitude issues. So, a potential and even history making margin of defeat and definite drubbing descended into a bit of. showing up really. They may have a real attitude issue there, but one things for sure, despite all the theatricals perhaps at the end of the day they had a chance to really rattle the rugby league with a massive win but instead something happened that made the watching neutrals out there that I've spoken too think that perhaps they are not quite as good as they think they are.