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Bradley swatting g McNally aside for his second try was the highlight

If litten keeps performing the way he is surly he gets a consideration at hooker.

Loads of posts removed. This is a match thread. Not the place to wang on about woke and DEI. That belongs in the politics sub forum. Thanks.

Excellent win, sounds like we really kicked on 2nd half and opened up in attack. Defence sounds like it still needs working on though. As usual some ridiculous knee jerk nonsemse in a match thread.

Knock ons are distinctively adjudicated on whether they travel forward in relation to the ground.

You might have been down to bare bones but you certainly played well as a team with Ritson providing some moments of brilliance. I was relieved after last couple of tries as it was nip and tuck all the way. Good luck for rest of season.

When I arrived in London from Oz in 1980 I picked up a copy of the Australasian Express to discover there was a RL club called London Colonials nearby. A phone call was answered by an Englishman, Gordon Anderton, who was Chair of the London Amateur Rugby League( just 5 clubs) but was also doing all the admin for the transient Colonials One thing led to another and Hemel joined the London League that grew to three divisions of 27 teams under Gordon's management (such was the influence of the newly arrived Fulham RLFC). I remember going to his funeral. The London League really suffered in the late 1990s with fewer and fewer clubs being able to fulfill fixtures. In (1999) it became impossible to keep the winter competition going and the secretary gave up. A few of us on the committee (Andy Johnson, Mark Hutton) stayed on to try getting it going again playing in the summer. I was the new secretary. That first season (2000?) there were only four clubs willing to give it a go. I've lost my records from the time, but I recall Skolars, Elmtree and somewhere up in Essex (I don't remember Hemel that season). There was no chance they were going to be able to play each other all home and away, so I came up with a Merit League system whereby teams got points for winning, but also for completing home and away pairs and traveling something like 50 miles. By the time I stepped down in the mid-Noughties, we had built the League back up to 8-10 teams. The records will be somewhere in my garage. I'll try to dig them out at some point and add them to this strand. {LARL London Amateur Rugby League)

Were winning well 10-0 then concentration badly impacted by a clown of an Oldham fan deciding to get on the pitch and give the linesman a piece of his mind. Looked the worse for wear and needs to control his drinking as I recognise him as a long standing fan. This stopped the game for 3 or 4 mins and allowed Barrow to hatch a plan for a set move and scored directly from the re-start. We just completely lost concentration by this break in play and before you knew if were going in losing 14-10 at half time. We should have been out of sight though as blew 5 try chances in 1st half. Second half we wore them down. PLT and Drinky excellent .

I think the commentary has been excellent

20226 at MKM today, very good

Thought we played well for the majority of the game but definitely overplayed our hand in the first half butchering 4 or 5 guilt edged chances. Then that crazy last 10 mins of the half after the stoppage where we didn't touch the ball again until half time. Second half I felt like we dominated from start to finish and the tries Barrow scored were absolutely superb bits of skill that you almost can't stop. Barrow were very good again as they were missing several big players but they tackled their hearts out and then scored 3 cracking tries from kicks. Individually I thought PLT was superb and had his best game in an Oldham shirt. Thought he started this season slowly but his 3 or 4 games have been great. Drinkwater was class again with his passing supreme at the line and then he scored a cracker himself. McDonald has some brilliant moments but was definitely trying too hard. When he just ran hard he was obviously way too good for this level. Think we'll have to smarten up a few area's for next week against Fev but were on the right track I think.

He chooses to sit with his partner now, I was on the back row and I certainly didn't expect him to go on the field, the stewards were slow to react but when they did they could see he wasn't right. Glad we got the win and can look forward to next Sundays draw, hopefully no more drama from the stands going forward

As a Widnes fan, I'm hoping KR play themselves in the final.

Indeed and yet on the back of this match where he's easily been the top metre maker on the field, and his opposite number hasnt had a sniff, he's been written off as an attacker and a defender.

We heard you first time Donald, you on the dark fruits again.

We need him to stop going awol in these big games.

He's dog poop isn't he, Sailor

So to clarify, the ref did know the laws of the game and the topic creator ?

https://padge.smugmug.com/Rugby/StJudes/St-Judes-v-St-Pats-05042025

I've said it before on here but refs make far fewer mistakes in a game than the players.

The answer to that question is probably always "no" because referees aren't as useless as some people like to think.

Not going to make a judgement on the man going on the pitch as he clearly wasn't well and he's been a loyal fan for years as has been mentioned , but the stewards where worse than useless had that been someone with much worse intentions the touch judge could have been in a lot of danger , whatever we feel about any officials performance the least they deserve is to know they are protected from any physical violence

I thought we were very sloppy in the first half after the first ten. Overplayed and were trying to score off every tackle. Got carried away with having a new star player. We invited them back in and they accepted. We were much better in the second half and played through the middle, then used football and pace. Barrow were very smart once they got a foothold and were resourceful. Macdonald will be much better for the game. Roll on next week.

Not at all, just saying people so quick to judge, tony is the nicest guy u could ever meet and the alzeimers has ravaged him, been all over the country to games with him and never known him to react, I was shocked myself today, I spoke to him afterwards, he's a broken man unfortunately

No surprise really, I'll hold my hands up and say I've learnt something and I appreciate I could have been less controversial with my question. However I feel sure many knock ons are given even though the ball hits the ground behind the point of contact with the would be catcher. I've previously assumed such decisions were correct but thanks to those posters with greater knowledge of the rules and also thanks to Chris Kendall and Ben Thaler I now know differently.

Who cares, rip the paper up

It looks to me like he’s just looking at the hole where he’s about to put his hand rather than checking the balls out, you’d need to do that before looking away. Also there’s zero reason to fix the draw, the four teams are all quite comparable I wouldn’t particularly favour playing one over another, it’s not like Wigan and a championship team were left in there.

Another missed opportunity. A week lost to sell more tickets and promote the competition

Why do RL fans think these are impossible questions or that answering is a problem? Go with: it's disappointing, the Cup isn't always the draw it should be, and the emptiest bit is the one in front of the camera. But, isn't the game good? No need for cringe.

10.1k at Wire. Looked and sounded decent enough tbf.

Whitehaven v Newcastle 772

VR: OK the ball is grounded, let me check the catch. That's ok. Now I'll just make sure the ball is grounded again.

Agreed. They're really quite good. Jiffy spot on as usual

That just sounds like you’re searching for a negative in his performance, had he stayed on his wing and the ball went to the centre for a walk in you’d be saying Young should have come in to make the tackle

I think if you delve a bit deeper, all of sport or even maybe all big industry is based on a rich person/people putting their money in, rather than the income that's generated.

Skybet have the Knights at 1/2 favourites for the game. Widnes have a 8 points start on the handicap. In the other games, Sheffield have 20 points start at Bradford, London have +10 at Fev., and Barrow get 20 start at Oldham.

Yeah as others have said, knock ons do need to be adjudged to have travelled forward ‘in relation to the ground’ although if I ever hear the term ‘in relation to the ground’ 7 times in 30 seconds again, like Thaler achieved, I think I’ll be petitioning for a new definition. Forward passes have been made overly complicated for years, because in reality many passes do go forward ‘in relation to the ground’ but that’s when momentum has to be considered and thankfully, for the most part refs/touchies just look at which way the hands were pointing when the ball was released. Rapana’s pass for example looked forward if you watched the field/grass markings but his hands released it backwards.

An estimated 5000 at the French Cup Final today. Looks like the Albi fans, once again were out in force.