The Blues Ox

WEDNESDAY 28th JUNE Whitehaven v York Knights Haven by 10 SATURDAY 1ST JULY Toulouse Olympique v Widnes Vikings toulouse by 64 SUNDAY 2nd JULY Barrow Raiders v Batley Bulldogs Batley by 10 Bradford Bulls v Keighley Cougars Bradford by 22 London Broncos v Newcastle Thunder London by 38 Swinton Lions v Sheffield Eagles Swinton by 6 Whitehaven v Featherstone Rovers Fev by 42 York Knights v Halifax Panthers Fax by 16 Tough one to predict this week so many games that could go either way with probably only 3 nailed on. Tough midweek trip for York and one that will likely do Fev and Fax a favor on Sunday. Obviously Toulouse will just be a case of how many against Widnes. Bradford should beat keighley with them in turmoil and same goes for London. Swinton V Sheffield really tough to call with Sheffields drop in form and Fev and Fax could benefit from opposition mid week games otherwise those could have been really tough to call as well.

Set the tone for our season, total mess of a game for us.

With Bradford not having many people apply for the job with their problems, you wonder if Widnes will be the same. There just seems something very fundamentally wrong at the club.

Im going to allow you stealing my joke if anything just because you went to great lengths to show a picture of the shirt that they would be playing in.

I think the only way that it could possibly work is for the Warrington team to be rebranded as Warrington Cheshire Cats. Anything else seems like a missed opportunity.

Its a shame that Newcastle are not a bit better this year or could have been really, really good at the bottom. Mentioning Newcastle has me wondering if anyone has heard from ShropshireBull lately? Not seen them post in a while and won't let me tag the username.

I can see how some of them would work, obviously Hull becomes really strong and the Ponty teams probably benefit from it. Really not sure the point of Leeds merging with Hunslet or Halifax merging with Bradford and Keighley. The same could be said for Huddersfield, they are already made up of players from those areas already so just killing 3 other teams off for the sake of it seems a very Rugby League thing to do. Think the RFL might go for it.

I reckon london are the only team currently outside the top 6 that are capable of pipping either Fax or Bradford for 5th or 6th. They have certainly improved quite a bit from the start of the season. For the rest it looks like a right battle for the last relegation spot and on form Widnes must be really happy they picked up a good number of wins early doors as they look in real danger.

Yeah its been a while since we last beat you guys at ours. Funny how some teams have bogey teams and yet our record at yours is probably better than any other team in the Championship over that same period. And yeah my old man struggling with his knees and although there is plenty of parking around the ground wherever you park it means either a trail uphill or downhill before or after the game one way or another. If someone is taking you though the people in the car park at the ground are usually pretty good and will let you just drop off and drive through.

Would be a surprise if it needed changing. We havn't beaten London at theirs since 2003.

Found Austin with 47 in 90/91 season. The thing that amazes me with those sort of records is that they were done in winter rugby times playing in mud baths. Newlove and Austin both just looked like they were gliding on top of the surfaces.

Barring injury then he could set the bar very high. Hard to compare to old formats like I remember Greg Austin getting about 45 or so one season in the old second division. Possibly, but if they do he deserves it and to be honest I'm not sure how it hasn't happened already. For me Saints took the wrong player but I wasn't complaining and he is one of those players that makes it worth the entrance money.

Not at all. I bought in to the hype before the start of the season and had them down for 1st or 2nd with the huge change in culture that they had and with signings that got their fans salavating at the mouth I'm quite simply amazed that they are only in 6th. I can only think of one or two things to blame for this as it can only be down to pure bad luck so can only be the pitch, injuries, Nigel Wood, Nobby, the previous coach who nobody can remember, the tea lady, Mick Gledhill, Bullman, Cow girl, that Paul Newlove song, Chris Caisley, Jordan Lilley. Other than that would defo be top 2.

I'm not gonna count the Bradford loss to Toulouse because I think with a full team Bradford go over there and smash them. So for me they are still the team most likely to get in to SL this season. Obviously for Fax its our worst season in a while and to be honest I see it as a total fluke that we are above Bradford at this point playing like we are and just shows how unlucky Bradford have been.

He certainly is, I believe that takes him to 28 tries in 15 games in the league. Anybody have any idea what the record is for the Championship in its current format? He's got to be on target to beat it with so much of the season still to go. Think today might also be the 3rd time this year that he has notched 4 tries. The impressive thing as well is that he is doing it in a team that hasn't really played well this season.

Tragic news. Lots of good memories of his time at Fax but one sticks out in my memory was a time we were playing Sheffield at home and ben's shoulder had gone and he had been getting treatment on it and it was hanging loose but we had not had time to make a sub and we were defending our line and Menzie Yere ran at him and he had no hesitation in slamming in to Yere with his injured shoulder. Hard not to like a player who is willing to do that for the team. RIP.

Won't be long before the inevitable happens again.

Yeah I think those on here pretty close to the club will know Im closer to the truth than some will want to believe. Fev won't be the only Championship club living week to week but it always could be worse you could be following the Bradford model.......

Pretty easy week this week although Keighley V Haven has potential to be one that could trip people up. FRIDAY 23rd JUNE Sheffield Eagles v Newcastle Thunder Sheffield by 22 SATURDAY 24th JUNE Toulouse Olympique v Bradford Bulls Toulouse by 28 SUNDAY 25th JUNE Batley Bulldogs v London Broncos Batley by 10 Halifax Panthers v Barrow Raiders Fax by 14 Keighley Cougars v Whitehaven Keighley by 4 Widnes Vikings v Swinton Lions Widnes by 18 York Knights v Featherstone Rovers Fev by 24

Ive not looked but going to head over there shortly. Knowing Bradford fans I would imagine they are very happy about their 4 wins and a draw in their last lot of fixtures and their judgment will be impaired by that rather than thinking they just won 4 games against the weakest teams in the division and lucked out on a draw with Fax and rather than the uproar we would have seen a few weeks back, I think they will be ok with it. Going back to Riley Dean earlier in the thread, I heard from a family member over the weekend that it was simply a case of Warrington got bored of having to chase Fev for their payments and in the end refused to let him play.

Yeah your No.1 is a pet hate of mine its almost random how sometimes it will be 6 again and sometimes a penalty and the constant coaching by the ref to the players is too much in my opinion. On No.2 it will have been the linesmans call for probably 90% or more of the forward passes and there is no need to signal with the comms they use. Its debatable on some of the calls but I think the major calls they look to have got bang right especially the disallowed tries. On No.3 I would agree he is too good for the Championship and only a matter of time before someone takes a chance on him. The only sticking point is whether a SL team is willing to match his wages or if he is willing to take a cut in wages to go full time. Either way he is a natural try scorer and to score so many tries in a misfiring team is some going. Can't see him ever playing centre though he just looks like he is built to be an out and out winger.

At least they have recognised it as poor technique then.

That 1st one from Leigh he is lucky he released at the very last second otherwise the York player could have been looking at a very serious back/neck injury and its a minor miracle he avoided injury at all. I think 7 or 8 matches for that would be appropriate. I think Hardaker will get a couple as that technique could quite easily cause serious injury and is reckless and the defender does have some responsibility to the attackers welfare.

Out of interest do you think any of your 3 tries that were disallowed were wrongly disallowed and do you still think a knock on was missed in the build up to a Fax try? Personally I do not rate Tom Grant and think he is one of the poorest ref's at this level but I thought he did okay yesterday, he is always inconsistant with his calls from one half to the next but yesterday I thought he was consistant through most of the match and don't think he got anything glaringly wrong but Im happy to be proven otherwise once you have had chance to watch the game back.

Yeah not sure how we went in at half time in front given 1 set in the Bradford half in the first 30 minutes. I thought Bradford were outstanding for the first 20 minutes, must have completed at 100% and each set finished in our bottom right hand corner while Fax gave a few penalties and a few silly handling errors which is the norm for us. From that point I thought we were the better team though and I have no idea how we managed to throw the game away in the last few minutes. I was only half joking regards the celebrations at the end but I think the reactions of the players shows where each team is at this stage. Bradford probably exceeding expectations and Fax well below the targets they set at the start of the season. Personally I feel like we need a change in coaching personel at this point to try and rescue the season because we looked to have gone distinctly backwards after last season barring 2 maybe 3 performances.