bamfordsbeans

Poor crowd at Salford considering that they were playing Wigan and coming on the back of their convincing win at Warrington.

Its not the club who miss out on the beer sales at the Shay,but Calderdale Council who own the ground. Self destruct by Halifax in the last 20 mins and after a heavy defeat to come on Monday they are going to struggle for the top 5 this year. Perhaps Bradfords full time fitness was a factor together with a poor referee.

Great performance by Fax considering they were missing 8 players who would all have been in the starting 17. However it gave opportunities to the reserve players and which they certainly took. It just shows the benefit of having a reserve team and I can't understand how other clubs cannot see this. The only downside of the night was the attendance.Gates are bad enough in general at the moment,but when you add Challenge Cup and Thursday night into the mix it is a recipe for disaster.

Fax and Fev have probably been the best two part time teams in the competition over the last few years. Both are short of money and little hope of progressing from where they are at present. The similarities end there as one team has chosen to rely on dual reg and overseas players,whilst the other has chosen to stay with largely home based players and by running a reserve team, has introduced prospects for the future. The Halifax model is probably the best way forward for the general well being of the game,but results matter. Fax's performances have been very patchy so far this season and whilst Marshalls record over the last 4 years should certainly give him more time he needs to make the most of that.

14 teams would give a better balance to the season with 27 fixtures and eliminate the need for the extra games. As far as players are concerned we can surely take some from our thriving reserve competition!

Interesting to note that attendances are generally higher in the early months when the weather is not so good and go down when the better weather arrives. Early days for the new regime,but I think a minimum target should be to arrest the slide of the last few years.A 1% increase or similar would be satisfactory for starters.

Does anybody know if any pitch inspections are planned for any of todays games? Don't know about the Shay but the football was called off yesterday and it is certainly worse today.

When a team wins the league,cup etc in most instances this leads to an increase in gates and feelgood factor. Not in Wigan it seems!

Under the circumstances this is not a bad schedule. The triple header at Eden Park should be interesting. Is Hamilton likely to get as much interest as Auckland from the Tongan's?

Saints getting the decisions again.It seems to be a common theme that the top sides seem to get more than their fair share of 50/50 calls.

Despite the overall low attendances ,it is interesting to note that nearly half of the clubs listed got higher averages than they currently get. It is only the big 6 or 7 that have dramatically increased their attendances.

After 23 years of SL and all the false promises we are no nearer getting the elite league that most of us hoped for when the sport was in the unique position of hitting the national headlines for all the right reasons. The initial enthusiasm from that night in Paris soon wore off and whilst few would argue there has been progress over the years,most of it has been slow and possibly at the expense of other parts of the game. Until we have more than 6 or 7 candidates Idon't see licensing as a realistic proposition.

Entertaining game although defence on both teams was not upto standard. For the second week in a row Hicks had a poor and influential game.If he's our best ref it says a lot for the rest.

Not one side from west of the Pennines.

The vast majority of RL enthusiasts realise that only an increase in international recognition can start to address the great imbalance we currently have. The current situation re the Lions tour sums up where we are and until the only 2 fully professional set ups in the game are of the opinion 1-International 2-club , we are not going to get what we want.