Blimey if anything could go wrong it did today, first up we get that ginger g*t Stokes as Ref yet again for a Fev match why???
Then Ben Kaye is out with a cut hand (he did it at work I believe).
Fev come with a boatload of DR players how many was it 5?
A dropped ball costs us their first try (good hands by Fev to be fair in the move from the set of 6 following).
Miles gets badly injured with what looks like a long term injury too!
Then a soft try and Fev are 10 nil up and the game looked up for us the way we were playing.
We did battle back and got a lucky try, we then got on top for a long spell but did not take our chances (some poor passes cost us)
Murrell gets sin binned (jury out on that one he did hit him a bit late).
The ginger one gives them a penalty for what even Fevs fans and players did not appeal for and they go and score what looked like the game breaker but again we battled our way back into it and scored and had them rocking only to suffer a try from a spawny ricochet and it really was game over only to have to suffer what felt like an eternity before the hooter was blown at 4.52pm!
There was a lack of atmosphere today from both sets of fans and a poor turn out as well from both teams only 2187.
For me both teams will struggle to get into the top 4 on this showing, we both could be also ran's we have a tough set of games coming up this was a game we needed to win.
So we lose to the flat cappers for the 7th time at home on the bounce, we must have really upset somebody upstairs (when we beat them in those Finals and semi finals) to have to suffer that statistic surely our turn will come, please???

a penalty count bypass I believe......12-6 in your favour......not enough? we or the players don't need to appeal for the ref to give us a pen.....4 DR(jury out on that one too)......poor game from stokes(agreed).....sounds bad for miles, hope he makes a full recovery......lack of atmosphere(agreed)....on recent performances some fev fans had us down to get beat, and ya right both teams will need to step up a gear to secure a top 4 place.....a wins a win when its not pretty, esp away from home, but over the 80 we edged it I feel, you obvious didn't take advantage of the penaltys given

lol, after our recent perfornaces i didnt have much confidence in us getting a result today. Then when we turned up and saw stokes who robs us blind every single game we have him I felt like going home.

He didn't disapoint, and the proof is in the penalty count. Constantly piggy backing you lot down the pitch or giving you an extra set of six on our line. he allowed you totarget Gareth Moore, hitting off ball and dropping on him late until he was forced off with a fecked shoulder

We had four DR, one of which was with us for most of last season on loan. 2 poor teams to be honest, we failed miserably to stop you from offloading

Poor game. Lacklustre crowd.
I'm not getting into stokes performance. We all know what he's like. Give him an opportunity to penalise and he will. Just keep your discipline.
An ugly win gets you 2 points. I'll take that over a beautiful loss any day of the week.
Leigh next week. I'm expecting a blathering.

Stokes was poor, is constantly poor, but doesn't favour either side. Fev"s repeated indiscipline at the play the ball should have resulted in a sin bin, so poor reffing again. I'm not going to blame him for the result though, we should have been better but losing Kaye and then Greenwood early on obviously disrupted our setup but we need to improve a lot going forward.

Its not the penalty count that bugs me with Stokes, but some of his decisions are baffling, and at key moments. Fevs 3rd try a classic example, he basically marched them over the line, no side can defend or counter that.
but..... the lads must be gutted, Fev were there for the taking and we were ultimately masters of our own downfall

I am not saying Stokes cost us the game we lost it through not taking our chances the point with Stokes is yer from your viewpoint he gave us more penalties but from ours two crucial decisions he made cost us big time, the sin binning which maybe was correct but could have gone ether way but that penalty to give you six more tackles on our 20 from which you scored basically in the end won you the match as your last try was a fluke come on. He is a poor Ref and for a Fev v Fax game we should not have to suffer him virtually every time is my point.

Fev were there for the taking today; yes the ref didnt have a great game but we had enough possession to win the game. Got to be smarter with the ball - poor passes , knock ons and unforced errors cost us in the end - we were masters of our own downfall - it is only early in the season and Fax did show glimpses of what they can do - but you cant play like we did and expect to beat Fev...

sum's it up perfectly.Kaye must have been injured in warm up as he was on the teamsheet in SSB.Great burst by Fairbank-but how did we manage to blow the 5 man overlap ? Kicking game and smartnness poor again,even our first half try was from a poor kick on a dumb 2nd tackle option.

agree, should have been a walk in try for one of them. they knew ball had to go that way but was so slow.

Thing is, we all know how George referees a game. We all know he's a pedant. So why on earth do we keep giving him an opportunity to penalise us. We all criticise the referee but players indiscipline doesn't come under anywhere near as much scutiny.
Murrel's indiscretion cost Fax the game at Fev last year and contributed a long way to the loss yesterday.
Murrel's and others discipline was costly - as was Fax poor execution and rank bad decision making. Ged Stokes did not influence the result.

I agree with that - fair review of yesterday - a game there to be won was lost by some poor execution and wasted possession- same in any sport really got to make the most of possession!!

Can't see anyone disagreeing with that.

That pitch aint gonna help you lot this season. It was terrible. Cant believe they play football on it.

looked like it had been ploughed

My thoughts on yesterday:-

Starting with the ref, I didnt think he was any worse than usual but a few things got me at crucial stages of the game. In the space of 5 first half minutes Fev conceded 4 penalties around the PTB but never got on a team warning, in my opinion he should have put them on a warning after 3 and that would have helped the game as the momentum had swung and you couldnt blame Fev for trying to slow us down. 2nd half I thought we were hard done by when we 'forced a drop out', in my eyes the Fev player grounded the ball behind the try line and then ended up back over it before been pushed back, next tackle we were done for offside. The only other decision I can think of was the Murrell one which I didnt think was a dirty tackle it was more a case that he couldnt get there in time and he did hit the kicker on his standing leg and deserved a yellow card for mine.

Fev looked crisper than us in attack at times especially early in the game but once we got a foot hold I think we dominated them in the forwards and they were struggling at times to make yards. That said they did enough to win the game once again.

On Fax I think if you watched the video but took the tries out and had to ask someone who won the game most people would say Fax probably won it by quite some distance but unfortunately sport does not work like that. We just bombed so many chances or took the wrong option too many times. Twice on the first tackle we lost the ball trying to force a pass that was not on, now we all want to see attacking rugby but there has to be some common sense behind it as well. If Moore catches that ball in the first half we would have gone in in front but again a missed opportunity and by the time we bombed the try in the second half I think most of us could see how it was going to end.

After the fairbank break all it would have taken was one killer ball instead the ball ended up in Tangata's hands after an awful pass when it needed a ball player with the ball to provide a quick pass and when that didnt happen it just slowed the whole thing down. I said last week if we were playing a better team we would have lost by bombing chances and it happened this week.

No need for the mass panic that seems to be happening though and there was plenty of pluses to take out of the game and even season so far. Saltonstall is one who looks the part and could do a great job while Greenwood recovers from his awful injury. Mannely was fantastic at hooker especially in the first half and is another who could potentially go on to be a really good player for us this season. The forwards I thought to a man got over their opposition numbers and our defence in the second half in the middle was very very good with some massive hits. I would be more worried about our lack of tries if we were not creating chances but that is not the case, take the Moore dropped ball, the fairbank fall, and Tyrer dropping the ball over the line and there is about 18 points there which would have more than won the game. When/if we can take our chances we will run up a big score against someone.

Dewsbury next week is massive though now and a real must win game against one of our main rivals. If we can beat the teams around us im pretty sure fev will slip up when they dont have all their loan players in and we can make ground up on them. The other thing is the club can not move forward on gates of 2k against one of our main rivals, we need more people down there getting behind the team.