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Match thread: Championship Rd 9. Bradford v Featherstone Rovers. Monday 25th April 2022.


marklaspalmas

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The pleasing thing for me is playing on a postage stamp set up for a bulls big pack and a forwards slugfest non of our tries were crash bang wallop :kolobok_wild: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tried to play rugby the first half, and kept putting the ball down due to lack of space.

Changed tactics second half, played direct and then exploited the pressure we put on their pack. 

Not a classic, and we did struggle at times against kicks... players who would normally be solid, putting balls down. Don't know what Luke was trying to do when he nearly gifted Walters a try.

 

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Not the best of performances but you have to credit the opposition sometimes. Bradford were up for this one just as Batley and Halifax were in previous weeks. There are some quality teams in the championship and Fev are far from unbeatable but do have a knack of upping a gear when they face adversity during games. Some tough games coming up and Mac must be finding it hard to keep everyone happy with his switching of players. Think he got the tactics right though this time with the size of the pitch.

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Much more effort from Bradford tonight which was nice to see but only proves why the fans are up in arms at the moment. All fine showing up against yourselves and Leigh when they can’t be bothered vs the rest of the league.

Ironically, Bradford looked good when throwing the ball around. As we’ve done everytime we do that. Kear will have been having a heart attack watching the players actually test their arms!! 

Featherstones quality showed out and was always likely the case. 

In the end it’s just the waiting game for Featherstone vs Leigh. My money is still firmly on Featherstone 

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I thought in the first half we tried to play proper rugby on a postage stamp and apart from the two tries when we cut them ope it did't work and we made bradord  look better than  they are

In the second half when we decided to grind it out down the middle we were always on top and looked a better side because of it 

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The point I was trying to make about our performance was we are still very hit and miss.

So far we had only hit anything like the form we would expect on maybe 3 or 4 occasions. 

We looked good against Leigh and Barrow, okay at York, and probably we were better at Catalans than we think. Apart from that we have been more miss that hit, even the cup game at Batley the defence wasn't all it could have been.

Now last nights game was one of those that is effected by the size of the pitch, really needs the RFL to invest and get their facilities up to scratch. You cant play an expansive game on a pitch where 6 passes take you from one touch to the other.

I think that come the playoff's we will be spot on, as Mac always likes his teams to peak at the right time, but our expectations, as fans, are for so much more.

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  I thought we would win by 12/14 points before the game so we did that ok..Bradford had a real go and caused us a few problems on the edges.Don't think our outside defence is good enough we miss Hardcastles tackling in the centre.Helewell ran good lines for his two tries but i think he could have done better on defence.Briscoe had a cracking game running the ball out and made good ground.But again his defence let him down the Bradford winger mugged him for his try. He was out of position when Kheirallah dropped that kick the winger had a walk in.Quiet game for Smith.and i don't think Wildie was quick enough at acting half although he does his share of tackling.Good first 20 min for Koppy who ran hard.Our  middle defence is better with Davies in there rather than on the edge and for me the best for us were Bussey.Jacks and Davies.Looking forward to Sunday against a struggling Widnes team.I think they will have a real go in the first half hour but can see us winning by 28+ points.

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1 hour ago, bigbaldnmad said:

The point I was trying to make about our performance was we are still very hit and miss.

So far we had only hit anything like the form we would expect on maybe 3 or 4 occasions. 

We looked good against Leigh and Barrow, okay at York, and probably we were better at Catalans than we think. Apart from that we have been more miss that hit, even the cup game at Batley the defence wasn't all it could have been.

Now last nights game was one of those that is effected by the size of the pitch, really needs the RFL to invest and get their facilities up to scratch. You cant play an expansive game on a pitch where 6 passes take you from one touch to the other.

I think that come the playoff's we will be spot on, as Mac always likes his teams to peak at the right time, but our expectations, as fans, are for so much more.

I think that's a fair enough assessment, I definitely wouldn't be too harsh about our performance on that pitch last night.

We are a significantly better team than most in the league, but not quite so superior that we can blow away teams regardless of how they play against us.

We do seem to find it difficult to maintain maximum intensity, which I think is understandable when you're hot favourites for most games, and we seem to have a habit of falling off a little in the 10 minutes or so before and after half time when we are resting our main middles.

I do think we'll raise our game when we play Leigh again though (and they will too, of course).

 

Edited by The Phantom Horseman
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Think the gameplan was executed perfectly - bash them about first 40 and gas the forwards then move clear in the second half

JD was superb, every carry he always poked his nose through and was a real threat, all the forwards were to be fair

Our end of set kicking was woeful, very rare do we press with a kick behind and force a repeat set from it - Im pretty sure we are down there as being one of the worst in the league in terms of stats with regards this

Hoping Ford will help us increase the pressure further with some astute kicking descisions when he comes in 

Edited by elppaxr2i
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Being almost 80 I didnt go to Odsal but watched it on PS at my son in laws . My main gripe was this 6 again. Not being able to hear or see the 6 again from the Ref. I was at a loss when one was given and only twigged when the tackles changed back to nil. With SL you can hear the chime of 6 again, but not so in the championship which is a shame.

Does anyone else feel the same

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36 minutes ago, elppaxr2i said:

Think the gameplan was executed perfectly - bash them about first 40 and gas the forwards then move clear in the second half

JD was superb, every carry he always poked his nose through and was a real threat, all the forwards were to be fair

Our end of set kicking was woeful, very rare do we press with a kick behind and force a repeat set from it - Im pretty sure we are down there as being one of the worst in the league in terms of stats with regards this

Hoping Ford will help us increase the pressure further with some astute kicking descisions when he comes in 

I agree about the kicking, although I'm not sure it was woeful, just second best compared to Patton's high balls which stayed long enough in the air for the chasers to put the catcher under pressure. That's all he did though, he was miles behind Riley in general play, a typical John Kear half-back.

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1 hour ago, haskey said:

 My main gripe was this 6 again. Not being able to hear or see the 6 again from the Ref. I was at a loss when one was given and only twigged when the tackles changed back to nil. With SL you can hear the chime of 6 again, but not so in the championship which is a shame.

Does anyone else feel the same

Yes. Unlike Sky Premier don't carry the ref microphone feed (you could still sometimes hear the ref's voice by natural means but it was not very loud).

It's a difficult one as a lot of people don't like Sky carrying it because of the constant intrusive shouts of "moooove!", "dominant!", "surrender!" etc which is understandable. For me I quite like it though, partly for the reasons mentioned above that you know when a 6 again has been called, but also because when you know the timing of the ref calling the tackle complete, the subsequent decisions to penalise or not tend to make sense.

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1 hour ago, elppaxr2i said:

Our end of set kicking was woeful, very rare do we press with a kick behind and force a repeat set from it - Im pretty sure we are down there as being one of the worst in the league in terms of stats with regards this

 

This is probably true (and our end-of-set kicking was pretty poor yesterday) but equally I'd be fairly sure that we're by far and away the team that has scored most tries over the last year or so from running the ball on the sixth tackle.

I noticed this under Webster last year, we scored try after try running the ball on the last tackle. Personally I don't think it's a bad ploy, you're attacking the defence when they're sitting back waiting for a kick whereas it's harder to score from a kick on the 6th tackle because the defence is expecting it.

It's true that you can get a repeat set from a well-judged short kick but equally the downside is pretty bad if the ball goes dead since the seven-tackle set was brought in. Conversely if you turn the ball over by being tackled within a couple of yards of the opponent's line on the last tackle you can fancy your chances of getting decent field position on the next set if you defend well.

I agree re Ford and I'm sure Kheirallah can't wait to be chasing his kicks again with that signature move, though IIRC a lot of his tries from Ford kicks came fairly early in the tackle count when the defence isn't expecting them.

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I'm part of the "frustrated at our last tackle kick options" club too but I think with the miniscule in goals, a 20 metre restart being about a quarter of the field, and the extra tackle after said restart, we were probably better off not attempting kicks into the in goal on a pitch that our halves have rarely / never played on.

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First half every single set when Bradford was in their own half they got a 6 again or a penalty this calmed down in the second half which lead to our domination.  Wildie control at the ruck was superb and only good defence prevented a lot of damage,  Connor Jones pace may of exploited this better.  Davis was brilliant and. Worth the money alone to see his complete lack of regard for his own body.  

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For me when it comes to kicking you should be kicking into touch to set up a scrum and get your defence set 4020's or little chips like brandon for a try  and ryley for a drop out

When it comes to kicking to the corner on the last waste of time more times than not you will be penalised 

Example last night Foggy caught the ball put on  foot on the ground but lifted his other into luke result penalty for bulls and don't forget the penalty that led to bulls first try 😭

If you're going to kick on the last you should always kick it up in  the middle and try to bring the posts into play looking up ball post ball post will it won't it🤣

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2 hours ago, Cardypaul said:

To be honest I am more concerned about our inability to defend kicks not just last night but for most of the season, every time the ball went up we didn’t look convincing 

I'd agree, Briscoe and Gale aren't great under the highball. A definite concern to me as well.

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