Dewsbury Rams v Batley Bulldogs Sunday 23rd August, KO: 15:00 - Live Music

[horbury ram]

Edited August 20 by horbury ram

[horbury ram]

Officials for Sunday

• Referee: L. Bland
• Reserve Referee: T. Bell
• Touch Judge 1: D. Frederick
• Touch Judge 2: J. Broomhead
• Time Keeper: A. Hardcastle

[Crown Flatter]

For a moment there I thought Rodney was back at the club, as timekeeper. 

[NickD]

Rams 6, doggies 54…

[Commentator]

HWD Hospital Radio

As many of you know, we are a charity run by volunteers depending totally on donations to keep our station on air 24 hours a day, including our commentaries on all of the Rams and Bulls home games.

This Sunday we will be shaking our buckets and collecting donations at half time during the derby match between Dewsbury Rams and Batley Bulldogs. Please give  

If you can't make it to the game, you can donate safely online: https://www.hwdhospitalradio.com/donate.shtml

Every £ really helps!

Thank you.

Martin (commentator)

[Blind side johnny]

The illustration of these musicians make them look like Muppets. A comparison with our recent team performances would be unjust, I suppose.

I will be dragging myself along if only to enjoy the penultimate dose of torture at our own ground before the climb up the table that 2027 is sure to deliver.

[RPH]

On 20/08/2026 at 18:10, NickD said:

Rams 6, doggies 54…

we struggled against Keighley down hill in the first half last Sunday...and only beat them on our very last back to six play..

If we perform like that at yours...you could be in for a win....it will be a lot closer than 6-54..

[Wakefield Ram]

2 hours ago, RPH said:

we struggled against Keighley down hill in the first half last Sunday...and only beat them on our very last back to six play..

If we perform like that at yours...you could be in for a win....it will be a lot closer than 6-54..

We played midweek. We only have one prop. Our halves create little. We have the same game plan for every game. PM has no tactics at all. We've won one game out of the last 11. The players look like they can't wait for the season to end.

Hunslet, Whitehaven and Rochdale have all put 30+ points past us in the last 3 games, two of them at home. It might be anything between a 30-50 point win for Batley, but it's hard to see any possibility of a Dewsbury win. 

The players will put a mammoth effort in like they do every week. 

Edited August 21 by Wakefield Ram

[horbury ram]

[KC Ram]

And so it begins, our season isn’t even over, it is our home game but kicked out of Royal Suite on one of the biggest crowds of the season.  No explanation, total disrespect to fans. Is this what the future holds? Being relegated to take whatever crumbs are thrown. 

[NickD]

12 hours ago, KC Ram said:

And so it begins, our season isn’t even over, it is our home game but kicked out of Royal Suite on one of the biggest crowds of the season.  No explanation, total disrespect to fans. Is this what the future holds? Being relegated to take whatever crumbs are thrown. 

[Wakefield Ram]

12 hours ago, KC Ram said:

And so it begins, our season isn’t even over, it is our home game but kicked out of Royal Suite on one of the biggest crowds of the season.  No explanation, total disrespect to fans. Is this what the future holds? Being relegated to take whatever crumbs are thrown. 

I doubt it will be a big crowd.

And it probably won't be the Royal Suite for much longer. More likely the "Davy Suite".

[NickD]

Suspect the closure of RS is nothing sinister.  The band are playing after the match, but outside.  It would be rude at best to have all the fans move inside to the RS after the match and leave the band playing to themselves or alternatively for everyone to stay outside and have no one in  the RS afterwards.    Reckon it makes sense to close it and open Bailey bar so folk can get their ale and listen to the music. 
That said, the club could have explained this rather than leaving us to speculate .  

[Crown Flatter]

Like others on here, I can only see another, big defeat.

As WR commented in his Rochdale post, it’ll be “Groundhog Day”. Once again we will be the punishment seeking individuals masquerading as supporters. 
 

Dewsbury 10-42 Batley

FTS: Coates

MoM: Nelmes (made to do the long shift once more).

Att: 1002.

[Wakefield Ram]

Credit to Batley for a very professional performance. Big pack, good halves and a star full back in Butterworth. They'd won the game by half-time

Dewsbury were the usual catalogue of errors in the first half and Batley took full advantage. 

Thankfully we showed some steel in the second half and thought Hookem had one of his best games for us. In 2nd half, we decided that trying our usual gameplan of trying to batter our way downfield wasn't going to work and threw the ball about to good effect. Could easily have had a couple more tries, but it wasn't to be.

Special mention to Louie Walker for his try out of nothing and a touchline conversion. 

Hopefully Paul Sykes gets another game next week

[The scrim reaper]

9 hours ago, NickD said:

Suspect the closure of RS is nothing sinister.  The band are playing after the match, but outside.  It would be rude at best to have all the fans move inside to the RS after the match and leave the band playing to themselves or alternatively for everyone to stay outside and have no one in  the RS afterwards.    Reckon it makes sense to close it and open Bailey bar so folk can get their ale and listen to the music. 
That said, the club could have explained this rather than leaving us to speculate .  

Wouldn't bother with the band next week! If it hadn't been for quite a few batley fans staying behind! It was a waste of time must have been not more than 20 or so dewsbury fans listening! 

[Wakefield Ram]

24 minutes ago, The scrim reaper said:

Wouldn't bother with the band next week! If it hadn't been for quite a few batley fans staying behind! It was a waste of time must have been not more than 20 or so dewsbury fans listening! 

These things take time to build. 

Maybe announcing what time the band would be start before the game, saying how long they'd be after the game might help.

[NickD]

49 minutes ago, The scrim reaper said:

Wouldn't bother with the band next week! If it hadn't been for quite a few batley fans staying behind! It was a waste of time must have been not more than 20 or so dewsbury fans listening! 

Think it was a good idea and I ho cares which fans stayed as long as they bought beer.   Well played to whoever organised it and let’s try again next year at some point. 

[Blind side johnny]

A truly pathetic first half and beginning of the second; even PM was disappointed with our defensive efforts. Some players working very hard, some trying to tackle by the collar, most preferring to play when on attack but not on defence. All this in front of a pretty meagre crowd giving Batley gloating rights.

The referee was very poor (note NickD) although it had nothing to do with the defeat. If we hope to attract decent crowds next season we will need much better than this.

[Crown Flatter]

At 4-6, we were awarded the first of our three only penalties and the chance to draw level with Batley and now we will never know if we would have gone on to play a better game. Running the penalty brought nothing but a Batley try and goal. From then on the first half belonged to the visitors, amassing a total of 24 unanswered points in that half. This was through some very good play by Batley and very poor tackling from Dewsbury and a touch of indifferent refereeing by Luke Bland from; missing forward passes, obstructions and one particular knock-on, which he indicated went backwards in the in-goal area. Luckily Olpherts was tackled.

Three minutes inti the second half saw Batley get six more points, but quickly followed by a Dewsbury rally with tries from Graham after a high cross field kick, no not from catching the high ball, but a scramble to get the ball and with Graham touching down, followed by Summers going over a few minutes afterwards. Some fancy never-say-die passing, akin to that seen in SL matches gave us tries from Lingard and Walker, who went over unopposed in the corner, when the Batley defence assumed a knock on by Walker, although the ball hit his leg; he chased the ball for the touchdown and then kicked a superb conversion. That was the end of our scoring, but Batley’s had the last laugh with a try and goal close to the end of the game.

A poor display in the first half, yet an entertaining performance in the second after the visitors seemed to have eased off.

We still lost the penalty count, this time at 3-8.
 

[Wakefield Ram]

7 hours ago, Crown Flatter said:

At 4-6, we were awarded the first of our three only penalties and the chance to draw level with Batley and now we will never know if we would have gone on to play a better game. Running the penalty brought nothing but a Batley try and goal. From then on the first half belonged to the visitors, amassing a total of 24 unanswered points in that half. This was through some very good play by Batley and very poor tackling from Dewsbury and a touch of indifferent refereeing by Luke Bland from; missing forward passes, obstructions and one particular knock-on, which he indicated went backwards in the in-goal area. Luckily Olpherts was tackled.

Three minutes inti the second half saw Batley get six more points, but quickly followed by a Dewsbury rally with tries from Graham after a high cross field kick, no not from catching the high ball, but a scramble to get the ball and with Graham touching down, followed by Summers going over a few minutes afterwards. Some fancy never-say-die passing, akin to that seen in SL matches gave us tries from Lingard and Walker, who went over unopposed in the corner, when the Batley defence assumed a knock on by Walker, although the ball hit his leg; he chased the ball for the touchdown and then kicked a superb conversion. That was the end of our scoring, but Batley’s had the last laugh with a try and goal close to the end of the game.

A poor display in the first half, yet an entertaining performance in the second after the visitors seemed to have eased off.

We still lost the penalty count, this time at 3-8.
 

Yes we should have kicked the goal at 4-6 as Bailey O'Connor was asking for. Would it have changed the result? No, but we were always going to struggle due to our lack of size in the pack and after a midweek game, get level, get a breather and get the ball back. So why not take the points? 

I was pretty close to Walker's try and to me it looked like a deliberate kick ahead, a "kick and hope" for sure, but a great piece of skill. 

The set that started with the Batley knock on ended with a try. 99 times out of 100 that would have been given as a knock on.

And for one of the Butterworths tries, Batley had crossed so their player gave himself up, Addy tackled him and the Batley player offloaded for Butterworth to score. It should have been a penalty to Dewsbury for crossing. 

Batley were far and away the better team, but they were very lucky with those 12 points. And once a team eases off, it's hard to get back into the groove, but they'd won the game by half-time. 

Edited August 24 by Wakefield Ram

[Ackroman]

That first half was woeful, one of the worst I've seen but the second half a credit to them for getting off the canvas.

A young side lacking confidence, no real understanding of how to manage a game under pressure. Error prone against a well seasoned side. I'm just glad for them that they didn't let Batley swagger through the whole game.

I'm not going to bag individuals because the Dewsbury "method" needs a complete overhaul and thats coming down the track.

[The scrim reaper]

On 23/08/2026 at 20:13, NickD said:

Think it was a good idea and I ho cares which fans stayed as long as they bought beer.   Well played to whoever organised it and let’s try again next year at some point. 

I think the idea of the band is to get your own fans to stay behind and spend some cash! Not every body else's! 

[NickD]

1 hour ago, The scrim reaper said:

I think the idea of the band is to get your own fans to stay behind and spend some cash! Not every body else's! 

I would t care whose fans stayed behind as long as they spent cash.   I suspect most capitalists would think on similar lines.   

[Wakefield Ram]

24 minutes ago, NickD said:

I would t care whose fans stayed behind as long as they spent cash.   I suspect most capitalists would think on similar lines.   

And before the game of course...