Barlow was a complete and utter liability, penalty machine would've been better with 12, most of the pack was anonymous after 25 mins and defensively we were ok 1st half but terrible 2nd half, they offloaded for fun.

Think fev showed if you stop murrell, you stop halifax

Nothing to do with stopping Murrell. We were just starved of possession from our own ill discipline.

We had no plan b" in attack, they read everything, especially in the 2nd half we allowed them to offload far too many times, we allowed them to steal the ball (unforgiveable)and our silly penalties just cost us in the end.

they shut him down, even when we had sets on their line we didn't look like scoring they gave murrell no time or space and handforth and thackeray aren't really creative enough to do it alone

That's just it though, we barely had a set on their line. We didnt create a platform for the halves to work off.

yep as i said the forwards were anonymous after the first 25 but we didn't look fluent at all with the ball and other than a few murrell kicks we never made a break

First half fairly even steven but second half Fev were much sharper.
Their halves were given the room to manouvere behind a strong pack display.
They ran quicker and passed quicker pinging the ball out wide on both sides of the pitch to some purpose with perfect line running and timing.

Possession or rather lack of it,well.

The penalty count whether justified or not didn't help.
Fev had at least 2 perfectly legal one on ones that got them the ball back in attacking posistion and took what should have been our ball from us.

We made more mistakes than Fev and dropped the ball early in the tackle count more than once which was largely due to the pressure slowly mounting against us.

Murrell and Handforth spent more time defending and were well marked on the rare occasions they did get the ball with their lack of pace exposed and they looked slow by comparison.
I had wondered how we would cope.

With that amount of lack of possession any side would be on the receiving end.
It will be a different sort of test of character for the Fax and which will a give another type of indicator as to were we are.

You are right we did look clueless in attack. Harrisons game plan is always about mean defence and grinding the opposition down. When we find ourselves 2 scores down against a well organised fev team you need plan b and we dont have it.

Blimey calm it, we've lost ONE game... We weren't complaining about a lack of ideas when we thumping teams by 50 odd the previous few weeks. It's a wake up call that you can't slack off like we did today in this division and Karl and the players will respond to that.

What's that famous saying - Form is temporary, class is permanent? I am certainly eating my words as i predicted a heavy defeat for us

We were sensational second half and played uphill in the second half the way it should be played - starve the opponents of the ball, exploit the chances that come your way

You gave us too much ball in first half - legally or not and we knackered the forwards out with the constant pressure - they were spent by the 60th min

Murrells kicking and brain was sensational in the first half but abysmal in the second half, Thackery ran around like a headless chicken for 80 mins and Handforth was a spent force due to the defensive shift hed put in - Take these three out of the game and the creativity for Fax is gone

All the ex Fev who ran rings round us last season, were anonymous today, even expected more from Tonka but he might have been a bit overrawed with the occasion as both his spells were avearge

At HT was a worried supporter but in the end it was suprisingly easy

A long way to go with no doubt twist and turns but a massive psychological advantage for us

A great turnout from Fax today 3,686 was the given attendence hope you all got off POR fairly quickly

Fair play to fev today. Would be nice if fev could have provided enough seating for all fax fans today. Know of several that couldn't sit in the allocated fax area. Not too impressed either with the antics of the goading ball boys, but hey ho, we still top of the league and proud of it!