Match Thread: Featherstone Rovers v Swinton Sunday 8th March 2020

[elppaxr2i]

6 minutes ago, Steve Slater said:

I hope he didn't go off injured? We want him back in the Rhinos 17 so that McClelland comes back to us. (Sorry Callum!)

He went off after 20 mins never to return so chances are he got injured which begs the question that was he truly fit to start in the first place?

[wasginger]

I thought today D/R didn't quite work for us today. I'm not blaming those players for our performance. I think Sutcliffe at loose forward found it difficult to get in the game plus getting a knock early doors didn't help. Josh playing in second row for the first 20 minutes struggled with his timing of taking the pass and the set patterns, after that period he settled down and really showed up well..For some reason in Sutcliffes side of the field, we either didn't seem quick enough to move the ball or took the wrong option and went on their own. Defence at times was slow moving up, but credit to Swinton for keeping going and making us uncomfortable. Finally not the best of afternoons but it's a long season and I'd rather take our time to hit form, providing we keep winning.

 

[hrtbps]

We played poorly and came away with the two points. I'll take that. 

[Michael Bates]

As admirably that Bussey is filling in at hooker we're crying out for a specialist in there, not only to speed it up but to get Jack back at prop, he's our most explosive forward and has a good set of hands too. Hopefully Parata comes back soon but I still hope we're on the lookout for another option to compliment him.

[tms]

12 hours ago, wasginger said:

I thought today D/R didn't quite work for us today. I'm not blaming those players for our performance. I think Sutcliffe at loose forward found it difficult to get in the game plus getting a knock early doors didn't help. Josh playing in second row for the first 20 minutes struggled with his timing of taking the pass and the set patterns, after that period he settled down and really showed up well..For some reason in Sutcliffes side of the field, we either didn't seem quick enough to move the ball or took the wrong option and went on their own. Defence at times was slow moving up, but credit to Swinton for keeping going and making us uncomfortable. Finally not the best of afternoons but it's a long season and I'd rather take our time to hit form, providing we keep winning.

 

That's because of the way we had to be set up   gale sutcliffe and carey playing  side by side getting in each others way

45 minutes ago, hrtbps said:

We played poorly and came away with the two points. I'll take that. 

Agreed think  we were trying too hard  at times instead of  playing simple rugby to keep the pressure on swinton  because the few times we did  as well as they played they just couldn't cope 

to summarise swinton played well for 80 minutes scored some good tries  and were always in the game FEV played well for 40 minutes and scored  some good tries  and were always in the game FEV never got out of first gear and   still scored seven tries if we had kicked the goals  we would have beaten them by 20 points but because it was close I think a lot of people after the game were wearing the world famous  FEV were rubbish heads    

[jamescolin]

16 hours ago, elppaxr2i said:

Goal line defence

Cheers.

[The Phantom Horseman]

On 08/03/2020 at 17:50, Robin Evans said:

 

Completion rate was dreadful.

 

That's the best summary of the game on this thread.

We must have lost the ball six or seven times in our own half, maybe more. If you do that and come away with a win then you dodged a bullet.

Contrast that with Swinton who played a conservative but sensible approach, and had a 100% completion rate until the last minute of the first half. They also kicked very well in that first half. They will upset a team or two with top 5 aspirations this year.

Most amusing part of the game was Fairclough "shushing" all corners of the crowd after his try - when we'd played about 10 minutes - then ultimately responsible for his team's chance disappearing when knocking on on his own line near the end, and we sealed the game on the next play. To be fair he does a good job of getting under people's skins and anyone who ever saw Littler play would imagine his coach loves him!

[Private Baldrick]

There were a couple of incidents placed on report in the Swinton game, anything come of them?

[The Phantom Horseman]

9 minutes ago, Private Baldrick said:

There were a couple of incidents placed on report in the Swinton game, anything come of them?

We'll find out tomorrow, disciplinary for Championship takes place Thursday.

The incident on report which involved (I think) Gaz Gale is only partly caught on the  club's video so he might be alright, we'll see.
Susino was penalised for a late shot in the first half, the RFL have been clamping down on these late shots to the back this year, I don't think it was a bad one of its type but we need to be careful with those late shots, there was another later in the second half where Carey (I think) took out the dummy runner too that also led to a penalty, like the Gaz Gale one it was the wrong read.

[The Phantom Horseman]

On 11/03/2020 at 09:54, Private Baldrick said:

There were a couple of incidents placed on report in the Swinton game, anything come of them?

Looks like no bans for any of our players, Gale received a caution.

Sammut has been referred to the Tribunal as his dangerous throw has been classed as a Grade D. He's looking at a 3-5 game suspension for that.