The Blues Ox

Is it just me or is Brad Dwyer a really selfish player? Always seems to be playing for himself.

Not sure what Saints players were complaining about. Totally nothing wrong with that tackle.

Should be a straight red forecful direct contact with the head. Early in the season its a red all day and it won't be a surprise to see Lomax get a ban for that.

Just really poor work ethic by the Saints players.

Oooof interesting. The tension is building.

Toulouse Olympique v Dewsbury Rams Toulouse by 38 SUNDAY 28th JULY Batley Bulldogs v Halifax Panthers Batley by 16 Doncaster v Barrow Raiders Doncaster by 10 Sheffield Eagles v Whitehaven Sheffield by 20 Wakefield Trinity v Featherstone Rovers Wakey by 22 Widnes Vikings v Bradford Bulls Widnes by 4 York Knights v Swinton Lions Swinton by 6

Not seen the Leeds squad but have heard they will be sending their strongest squad for the games.

Reading that interview with DB I can only applaud what IMG have done, this is going to go some way to make up for losing the drama of promotion and relegation and as a neutral I think its going to be brilliant and I really can't wait. Almost like rubber necking a car crash and you call help but feel the fallout from it is going to create a lot of headlines and drama.

Or could it be that there has been more scrutiny as to how concussions have actually happened this year? I know there was a lot of talk before this around that its very rare that a concussion comes from a high tackle so could it be a case that they have now monitored them differently with the help of these new mouthguards to pin point the actions that actually causing the concussions. It must certainly help the case with the insurers if they can go to them and say only approx 5% or less of concussions are coming from illegal play from competitiors. Another worry over this decision is that its based on 6-7 months of data and the reality is that it could simply be variance.

The good thing for anyone watching the community game on a regular basis is that the new rules that were brought in have not really been applied by refs who look to have taken a common sense approach. So although once again we have two different sections of the game playing under different rules it has hardly been noticable. It would be interesting to see a comparison of concussions in the community game compared to previous seasons.

I hope this does not cost Huddersfield their place in Super League.

Whos against it? I can't say I have seen too many on here saying much in that regard. There is a relly good chance Fax get relegated this season but I wouldn't change promotion and relegation for the world. I'm already eyeing up the last game up at Haven as a possible relegation decider and how that might make for an exciting game. What I am against is relegating teams to help League 1. That in my opinion is a stupid decision. Can you imagine Super League dropping a team to even up the Championship? They wouldn't do it so why should we when you already have so many competitive teams. The longterm idea is for SL to expand yet in the next division down we are doing the opposite.

Dont forget for this year only there is now a 6 figure prize for the winner which will be a nice little extra bit of cash for wakey to go with the millions they will recieve from SL over the next few years.

Maybe they could make the announcement in a Big Brother style where the captain for each team is put in to the house and then over 3 or 4 days teams could either be eliminated or given the green light. I did like the idea of a more Celeb Get Me Out Of Here theme but I think BB lends itself better to having a debate after elimination where we could get the Chairman of each team interviewed which could add to the drama. If IMG have anything about them they will make this happen.

Half and half. Approx 30k would still be enough to bring in a couple of very good forwards at this level. Its catch 22 really as I have no doubt that Widdop would look a lot better than he has done if he were playing behind a semi decent pack, the irony been that money spent on him has contributed to that not happening, that and our Football Director managing to increase our wage budget by over 100K while putting out a worse team than last season probably didn't help either.