Re: Batley on Sunday : Sun Jun 28, 2015 8:32 pm  

redeverready wrote:

Let's put it into context shall we. The result was 26 - 12 to Leigh who had their first choice 1'6 and 7 playing.

I'm referring to the Leigh v Batley game from the back end of April. Leigh won 56-8. HTH

Re: Batley on Sunday : Sun Jun 28, 2015 8:36 pm  

8ULL5HITT4 wrote:

We won
We had several key players missing and those key players avoided risking worsening their injuries.
We need 2 more points then Part 1 is completed of the task.
Don't see a problem.

Problem is it's the third week in a row we've played poorly. We have a tough run in coming up and Fax, Sheffield and Leigh will all fancy their chances of beating us playing the way we are. To earn promotion, we have to beat super league teams and a damn good Leigh team, not teams fighting to stay in the championship. This "Doing enough to beat Batley etc" mentality can easily set in and won't earn promotion.

80 minute performances are a myth, and no one is expecting us to put 50 past teams every week but last few weeks we've been poor, and our full time fitness has been getting us over the line, or poor mistakes from the opposition, not us playing well. Blackpool was the last good game we had as a team.

Yes our 1,6,7 were missing, the attack wasn't what worried me. It was our defence and how easily Batley made metres and won the collision. That has nothing to do whether our half backs were playing or not. Improvements needs very quickly.

Re: Batley on Sunday : Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:00 pm  

Bendybulls wrote:

Full-time professional training squad, but what are we training in - knitting, snap but little to do with rugby apparently. Once again no half backs, no direction and little organisation. JL cannot keep saying how poor they are and not doing what they practice - DO Something about it. Change our winning team that scrape together a result. Give Davies and Samir a run, can they be worse than Crossley, Fleming or Lauaki? Mendieka is a half, Shaw a fullback, Blythe a centre - play them in correct positions. Supporters do our bit turning up home and away - we need the team and coaching staff to do the same.

I don't get the criticism of Lauaki and Crossley. They were both excellent a few weeks ago (Doncaster at home IIRC) and do a decent job off the bench to allow our two best props, Clough and Sidlow, to catch a breather. Have to say I didn't think Tahraoui was bad, but I don't think he's better than our other options. Can't comment on Davies because I haven't seen him play yet.

Wouldn't worry too much about Mendieka and Shaw playing out of position. We've got three games in eight days to cope with and I fully expect Uaisele to be used on the wing and potentially Walker at centre, and we might have Siejka and Mullaney back. Blythe was named at stand-off today but played at centre, though we did have a centre at stand-off in Purtell as it turned out.

I wasn't expecting a good performance today with our first choice full-back, stand-off and scrum-half all missing. It's no surprise we lacked direction without those key players. Would I have taken a 34-16 victory before the game without those players? Yes.

Re: Batley on Sunday : Sun Jun 28, 2015 9:31 pm  

I agree that we were always going to lack cohesion without any proper half backs, and also that there was - yet again - some extremely soft defence.

I honestly think we are now paying the price for any lack of squad rotation throughout the season. Too many players starting to look jaded, and others who seem to thin that they can coast through games whilst pulling out some decent play for the 15 minutes that are necessary to 'get the job done'.

There are too many players thinking that they are going to be playing in the next game no matter what happens. Take the third Batley try today. I know the bloke is, to quote Stevo 'a big unit' but he basically ran through both Sidlow and Clough like he was some sort of NRL superstar. Sorry but that isn't good enough for two first choice SL-level props who had both just come back on after a breather.

But we all know that it will be Clough and Sidlow starting on Wednesday, with two from Crossley, Lauaki and Fleming on the bench.

O'Brien made a few good breaks in the 2nd half, but is looking increasingly jaded and flung out some wild passes. But there was no way in hell that Halahifi was getting on until we were three tries in front. Lowes obviously doesn't trust Halahifi to step onto the field until the game is won. Expect another 80 minutes from O'Brien on Wednesday then...

Then we have the way in which Chev comes straight back in after being injured for months, whilst Walshaw and Peterson are shipped out to our rivals. What did Chev do today to justify that? Apart from a couple of decent hit ups when he first came on ,he made zero impact

Not wanting to bag Lowes, but he's still got it to prove for me when it comes to his squad management

Re: Batley on Sunday : Sun Jun 28, 2015 10:29 pm  

I had to laugh at the game today, some guy to the side of me was bagging Chev Walker and stating what a lazy so and so he was. Bit harsh I thought, considering he hadn't actually made it onto the field of play at this point...

Re: Batley on Sunday : Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:52 am  

During our glory years we were usually crap at this time of year, but then came strongly at the back end of the season. I wonder if that has influenced Lowes' preparation? The structure of the competition means that there's an even bigger premium on peaking at the right time.

It all seems a bit pre-seasonish at the moment, waiting for the real stuff to begin. Very low intensity. Perhaps the aim is to step it up for the Leigh game and tricky trip to Fax before the Middle 8's.

Re: Batley on Sunday : Mon Jun 29, 2015 7:43 am  

mat wrote:

We were poor today. But we were missing three key players. Take brierley,ridyard and McNally out of Leigh and hiw would they look?. We ground out win despite that so some credits due imo.

I agree on the whole, we're the bones of a handy side BUT Leigh have Beswick, Penk(sp) and now Higham at hooker. Tons of experience, leadership. Despite real quality our first choice 1,6,7,9 are all young and the 2 who have hardly played barely played last year either.

Re: Batley on Sunday : Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:02 am  

A change of diet may help. I'm thinking of sending Jimmy a recipe for Vindaloo Curried Sprouts (Similar to highly concentrated Syrup of Figs but with go faster stripes)

Re: Batley on Sunday : Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:12 am  

Who was Stand-off? Team sheet said Blythe, but post-match Jimmy agreed that was a typo. Purts & Blythe did spend a lot of time swapping positions. Did Purts play stand off for a time as well?

Siejka had a knock. Should be back for Wednesday.

A lot of individual errors in the game. Dropped balls in attack - almost certainly due to makeshift half back pairing. Will be better once Siejka & Gaskell are back. We could have put another 3 tries on the board in that first half easily.

More worryingly was the errors in defence. Again, individual errors. Not seen that for a few months. I thought we had grown out of that. Not a lot of time on the training pitch this week to work on it either. 1,6 & 7 do organise the defence, but if players are lacking intensity in their tackling, organisation can only cover it up for so long.

Re: Batley on Sunday : Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:18 am  

I think worst performance of the season is a tad hyperbolic, it probably isn’t even in our top 3 worst, but I agree it wasn’t the best either but we’ve played far poorer with a stronger squad IMO. I also don’t think constant comparisons to what Leigh have done help either – Leigh lost to London the week after we beat them but that tells us nothing about the relative strengths of the teams involved. I’ve said it all season, teams are – for the moment – going to be far more bothered about knocking us off our perch than Leigh and so it was proven again yesterday; John Kear lives to coach for games like that. If we are to be consigned to a second season in the Championship – which I think a lot of us are realising is more likely than not – it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out. The squad will have had more experience of playing together, and the “novelty” of playing us will have worn off. I also think Jimmy will be under a LOT more pressure next year especially after lacklustre games like this.

As for yesterday, it was job done and maybe a lot is left to be desired but I thought we constantly looked threatening in attack – more than we ever did in the reverse fixture. At one point, I thought karma may have been coming back to get us, after getting a thoroughly undeserved win at their place, I thought Batley might sneak it despite being second best pretty much all game. If only a few more of our passes went to hand, or we respected position over scoring off the first play or break it would have been far more dominant performance. Agree though that defence at times was lazy. OK, not the ideal prep for the 8s with those key players out, but honestly it’s really hard to know what is.