Serginho wrote:
Following some of the Fitton lads coming to bury last week heckling us from the touch line saying they were going to put 80 on us and 'do in our props' it was nice to see them lose today.
Is that who was in the minibus? We thought it was some of your lads. Sounds like an interesting game, not surprised at what you're saying if I'm honest. Was the ginger winger involved?
Anyway, we lost 20-12 at Wigan Bulldogs. Had 8 first-choice players missing at a wedding, a patched up team with lads out of position throughout, and by an hour had only had one fit sub. We were probably the better side for the first 20 minutes but a ripped ball in a 2-man tackle saw Wigan score against the run of play. We lost form from then on and a string of penalties and errors gifted them points - a 14-point advantage we never recovered from though if we'd converted our tries would've been 20-18. Did ourselves no favours with a terrible completion rate.
Hope we don't get this ref again. It's the third time and I'd say he's crap but that's being nice. Allowing dragging players into touch, losing 15 metre advantage from a knock-on, calling players out of touch from 40 metres away - he let Wigan and their touchline ref the game. One of their lads lifted our little full back (only 5'4"ish) upside down, legs vertical, head down, and he didn't penalise. At one point Wigan knocked on, we appealed and he said "it was only a little one, I'll let it go." WTF??
Wigan played it tough and crossed the line quite often with high tackles, elbows, punches, late shots, etc. None of our lads reacted but in the end two of theirs were sin-binned after one kicked off (again) and the other swore at the ref.
*edit - forgot to mention we kicked off 30+ minutes late due to football traffic. Most of the squad were there but the coach and kit didn't make it until 2.45. No warm-up or prep, straight into kick-off, in fact we only had 12 men on the pitch.