Match thread: Championship Round 14. Featherstone Rovers v Toulouse. Saturday 10th June 2023.

[Squidward]

12 hours ago, RobLambert said:

 

Not sure where this leaves us.  Bad day at the office maybe but imo we are back to where we were at the start of the season - need at least another half back.  

 

 

First time I read this I thought you'd said Brad Day at the office.

[Squidward]

Am I correct in understanding that Thackery didn't play for Sheffield when they were beaten at home by Haven last week.

Either way, he would be invaluable to us now as would Chizzy even though some would hate that.

As good as lacans is and will be he's 5 years of experience short of leading us to SL without Ford by his side. 

Some on here doubted the wisdom of signing a talented half back on loan at the start of the season. The nightmare scenario that has occurred was the reason for that. In a way we are our own worst enemy. If Ford regains fitness but then gets injured again for the play offs we are going to struggle with what we have.

We have a formidable pack but as demonstrated yesterday with a team that plays expansive footy much better it can sometimes count for little.

Because of Hardcastles no nonsense style he's often the odd man out for the centre position but surely no more. Always in your top 5 players of the match. We were nothing in the centres and brad day once more this season offered little. I thought both wingers and full back were strong but the link to the pack was a weakness.

As said by others this is precisely the wake up call we needed so thanks OT you may have done us a big favour. 

[Rovers fev]

Centres is an issue we have hankinson whose solid but not quite match fit yet and hardy who is overlooked alot but I’d say he’s the best centre at the club and probably on the least coin Id much rather have hau in the back row rather than day I just think he offers more 

[Monkeymagic22]

11 minutes ago, Rovers fev said:

Centres is an issue we have hankinson whose solid but not quite match fit yet and hardy who is overlooked alot but I’d say he’s the best centre at the club and probably on the least coin Id much rather have hau in the back row rather than day I just think he offers more 

There’s also Joey, who started the season really well before his injury. 

[elppaxr2i]

Why are people clambering for a 33 year old Chizzy to come back?

His off the cuff maverick style of play is not what we require right now

We tried off the cuff yeaterday & look how that turned out 

[bigbaldnmad]

I don't think anyone is slagging off Lacans, it is just too much, with his experience, to expect him to boss a game like yesterdays. 

Chizzy isn't the way forward.

Joey, once fit and we have played him into form, and Hankinson, who also needs playing back into form, should be our stand out centres.

Josh plays every week for me, but as SR in place of Day, who has been bang average at best since his return.

[Phil Briscoe]

Agree about Day and I’ve said it before. I also said ages ago that Hall’s worst position is centre as he gets found out defensively against the better teams. If a numpty like me can see it why can’t professional coaches!?

[sentoffagain2]

29 minutes ago, Phil Briscoe said:

Agree about Day and I’ve said it before. I also said ages ago that Hall’s worst position is centre as he gets found out defensively against the better teams. If a numpty like me can see it why can’t professional coaches!?

  I Fell for the Hall in the centre argument because of his goal kicking against Barrow and he had a decent game.But i agree his defence is not up to scratch and he often shoots out of the line.But Hardcastle is a must for the seventeen all day long.I didn't think Moors had done enough to warrant a place and Longy left him out.

[RobLambert]

4 hours ago, elppaxr2i said:

Why are people clambering for a 33 year old Chizzy to come back?

His off the cuff maverick style of play is not what we require right now

We tried off the cuff yeaterday & look how that turned out 

Did we ?  I missed that........

[RobLambert]

1 hour ago, Phil Briscoe said:

Agree about Day and I’ve said it before. I also said ages ago that Hall’s worst position is centre as he gets found out defensively against the better teams. If a numpty like me can see it why can’t professional coaches!?

If Joey was playing yesterday Toulouse would have been out of sight by half time and I doubt he would have followed up his own grubber kick to score....

[elppaxr2i]

8 hours ago, RobLambert said:

Did we ?  I missed that........

Yes we did

We were absolutely terrible at making it up as we went along

[philcow]

Just shows Kevin Brown knows more about rugby than we do lol i am not too bothered about the loss they had their strongest squad out we didnt because of injury and poor selection in my humble view we will come back from this only one league loss at this stage i would have snapped your arm off tolouse can not improve on that showing we massively can keep the faith

[Monkeymagic22]

Incredibly there were a few rumours flying about concerning Sean Longs future. Hopefully just hot air, as it would be madness to change coaches at this stage. 

[FR23]

Longs not got it in him to take us to super league! Listening to him stutter in his  interviews going on about being grafters and working for each other it’s cheap talk. We’ve got a well known solid championship coach in Ford on our books so if it’s an option why can’t we get him more involved with coaching 

[lingaro]

We've lost one game and we're hearing this bolll. Ocks already.  This is why we'll never go up fickle support. 

[FR23]

Supporters having opinions is the reason we will never go up think there’s abit more to it than that 

[Fevrover]

Never happen anywhere fans having the same opinion but luckily most keep the faith with Rovers and although disappointed don't go over the top after a defeat, we were playing a full time Tolouse not a team at the bottom end of the league. 

[Rovers fev]

People calling for long to go are just backwards he’s had us playing good rugby and has ignited team spirit into a team who last year was flat as anything 

[Andrew Vause]

11 hours ago, lingaro said:

We've lost one game and we're hearing this bolll. Ocks already.  This is why we'll never go up fickle support. 

It's not fickle support is it. I watched yesterday and I was concerned, concerned that yet again we won't be good enough. 

We've blown teams that are poor away this year but against Fax, Sheffield, and Batley the result was on a knife edge.

We are poor defending on the edges when we are up against expansive teams, we lack creativity against decent teams when Fordy is absent. 

The only thing that will stop us from going up (well winning the GF, going up is another issue) is not being good enough. In football the best team over 38 games wins the Premier League unfortunately in Championship RL the best of 5 teams wins the league after 3/2 games usually the team that is the best vs the team with best momentum coming into the play offs. 

What the team must do as a minimum now, and should still do it is ensure that they finish first because a GF in say Toulouse or Halifax say will be daunting, that's assuming we get to the GF, the arrogance shown last year by some bit us on the Rs. 

 

[The Phantom Horseman]

9 hours ago, Andrew Vause said:

What the team must do as a minimum now, and should still do it is ensure that they finish first because a GF in say Toulouse or Halifax say will be daunting, that's assuming we get to the GF, the arrogance shown last year by some bit us on the Rs. 

 

Yes. It didn't make any difference in the end, but on Saturday there were at least two occasions where I don't think we were going to be awarded penalties for late/high shots but the united shout from the crowd seemed to help make the officials' mind up for them. That's part and parcel of homefield advantage.

[Monkeymagic22]

We were found short on Saturday and like I’ve said previously, we can’t just assume that things will be ok next time we play them or another one of the better teams. 
 

Its a problem that Long needs to solve, otherwise we are going to be disappointed yet again. 

[POR]

Now the dust has settled I think we can all agree as my gransdon says we were pants but for me it's not all doom and gloom as daft as it sounds if Craig had his kicking boots on it would have been 12 apiece at halftime and on the hour mark after scoring 4 tries to3 we would be winning 24-18 and if craig had passed to conner another six points so in theory it could have been 30-18 so chins up it's not the end of the world 

[J Phil Loxton]

4 minutes ago, POR said:

Now the dust has settled I think we can all agree as my gransdon says we were pants but for me it's not all doom and gloom as daft as it sounds if Craig had his kicking boots on it would have been 12 apiece at halftime and on the hour mark after scoring 4 tries to3 we would be winning 24-18 and if craig had passed to conner another six points so in theory it could have been 30-18 so chins up it's not the end of the world 

Yeah when you dissect the game there wasn't that much to worry about. Halls non pass cost us six points without doubt. Look at Toulouse's two debatable tries early doors. One was a yard forward the other more than iffy.  Hall had some difficult kicks but one of them I think at 18-18 should have gone over and didn't Lockwood drop a pass under the sticks in the act of scoring. It's fine lines as you point out and I'm saying we won 32-24 Add to the fact that they should have had a red card NOT yellow then between us POR we can justify in over turning the scoreline

[Monkeymagic22]

25 minutes ago, J Phil Loxton said:

Yeah when you dissect the game there wasn't that much to worry about. Halls non pass cost us six points without doubt. Look at Toulouse's two debatable tries early doors. One was a yard forward the other more than iffy.  Hall had some difficult kicks but one of them I think at 18-18 should have gone over and didn't Lockwood drop a pass under the sticks in the act of scoring. It's fine lines as you point out and I'm saying we won 32-24 Add to the fact that they should have had a red card NOT yellow then between us POR we can justify in over turning the scoreline

We were second best and Toulouse fully deserved their win. Moments like you say happen in all matches, but what counts is taking opportunities. If we just think, things will be ok, without learning lessons and making improvements they will beat us again. And to be honest, aren’t Toulouse likely to improve as well. For me this season does have some worrying parallels to last season, although clearly there’s no Leigh.

[J Phil Loxton]

41 minutes ago, Monkeymagic22 said:

We were second best and Toulouse fully deserved their win. Moments like you say happen in all matches, but what counts is taking opportunities. If we just think, things will be ok, without learning lessons and making improvements they will beat us again. And to be honest, aren’t Toulouse likely to improve as well. For me this season does have some worrying parallels to last season, although clearly there’s no Leigh.

Yeah plenty of lessons to learn. Most I highlighted in my tongue in cheek response. Toulouse will be looking at some of their frailties too. It's not a gimme that either club will be contesting the final though and other teams like Sheffield Halifax Bradford and our good friends from Batley will also be gearing up for the special day. We tend to be at our worst defensively in our own twenty against clubs who like to fling the ball out wide with players dashing out of the line. Though having said that we have still got the best defence in the league statistically and we have played everybody once.