Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Thu Sep 23, 2021 4:56 pm  

Peter Goddard wrote:

On Bulls twitter site it's different to the above. There is no Brad England but Flanagan is in there. Which is correct? I hope England is playing. Also why no place for Myers who was good last week (far better than Oakes) and what has happened to the loan prop from Hull. What a waste of time it was signing him.

Myers could well be a fitness issue only playing 20 mins atm and looks fairly unfit - example being his 80m break caught twice and was done towards the end I could see us using 5 props for this one

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Thu Sep 23, 2021 4:58 pm  

England won’t be playing as his foot was still in a protective boot last night

Lad from Hull had Covid so Must still not be fit enough to play, can’t be helped

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Fri Sep 24, 2021 11:11 am  

Fully agree with Bull Mania's summary of the situation.
Very sorry to hear that England is unavailable, arguably our best forward. Disappointed not to see Myers again, I thought he looked a threat on Sunday. Just hope the season which I've mostly enjoyed, doesn't end on a whimper. Clearly whoever wins on Saturday is likely to get bashed by Fev and Toulouse. Whitehaven must fancy their chances though.
Does conceding home advantage to Batley hit us badly in the pocket? I don't know how play off gate receipts are distributed.
Also, I thought the pitch had been widened and the corners sorted, but last Sunday it looked back to being narrow. Was that due to the abysmal state of the track, or were my eyes deceiving me?

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:00 pm  

Same issues. Not enough desperation to hang on there late in the half.

Can't see us coming back from this unless Batley tire and we have some barge over tries. We look lost.

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:29 pm  

Can see this being Featherstone 2016 all over again

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:54 pm  

A million sets and we don't look like scoring. Batley have one set on the half way and go up hill and score Gutless

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 4:11 pm  

yup sad end to the season after we had done so well .... last 4/5 weeks we've just not been there

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 4:23 pm  

Credit to Batley, they 'wanted it more'. Some of that goal-line defence was awesome

We look totally one-dimensional. Five ponderous drives and then a floated kick from Brough. Predictable and easy enough to defend against once you've worked it out (which Batley did)

Far too many players look out of shape as well. Who is responsible for conditioning these days, because they aren't doing much it seems?

I'm reluctant to join the 'Kear out' brigade but I do wonder if we've gone as far as we can with him. But who would we get who could really take us to the next level? It feels like there is more to come from this squad, but we aren't gelling as a team in the way that teams like...well, Batley, are doing

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 4:33 pm  

Kear isn't going anywhere so you can forget about that. I found his comments in his post match interview interesting, describing this season as more of a consolidation after the Chalmers mess but expecting to be genuine contenders next season. Those are some big words, so we'll see how the squad changes between now and next season because the players we currently have are nowhere near being contenders.

As for today's game, I like Elliot Kear but he doesn't work as an attacking pivot from fullback. Pickersgill is pretty lousy defensively but our string of defeats have coincided with his absense because we're missing what he brings with ball in hand. Kear doesn't have the pace or the fast hands that Pickers has and you could tell that we were playing the same system today and it wasn't working. Our plays ended with the ball in Kear's hands more times than I could count.
And when those plays didn't work, we looked lost in terms of a plan B. Our last tackle options were atrocious - at one point we had Anthony Walker throwing a (forward) pass to Jordan Lilley on a crash ball! Absolute madness.

I'm not too fussed about us losing because all it has really done is save us from an absolute mullering next week.

Re: Play-Offs: Batley : Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:01 pm  

Agree with Nothus, Kear at FB definitely isn't an option going forward. That Hall looked decent though.

So frustrating how we've just thrown a decent season away. Today, we just seemed to hope Batley would tire. They were there for the taking with all those errors. But we have too many players who were happy to take the ball up and that's it. Not that next level of wanting to score a try or make a break.