Before Derek took over at Leigh we were in a worse position than Fax , we couldn’t pay the players wages,our Directors had no real money to spend and the Club relied on fans fundraising efforts, it wasn’t good.
The position at Fax reminds me of our situation,I do think Grix is not the answer though, I said the players signed this season weren’t inspiring and the players who remained from last season were just a year older.
York , Leigh, and London are your next 3 League games plus yer postponed against Fev, not very optimistic.I know you don’t like loans or DRs players but it’s a case of needs must.

Charlie, Dewsbury were excellent in the first half against Leigh the other week, 8 goal line drop outs by us was it ? Only amazing defence kept them to 10 points.

I agree Budge, I said in my predictions that Dews had recruited well this season , and yeah they held us in the first half,the outlook for Fax is not good , Sheff were poor against us , yet should have beaten Fax, Oldham won away at Haven at the week end , this League is very competitive , my point is what is the answer for Fax?

Early days yet Charles...but you do seem to be concerned about them.

Whether Simon is out of his depth or not had little to do with tonight's game.

To put it into perspective.

Losing Gilmore after 14 minutes, being down to 11 men with 2 in the bin part of which overlapped at the same time, having Scott sent off meaning several players were out of position and a raft of other penalties going against us we spent little or no time at the right half of the field.

The winning score came on a last tackle kick on play into the in goal that Salty (who had a good game apart from this) completely missed grounding or knocking the ball dead when it was easier to do so that miss it like he did.

In the end in spite of all that we lost by just 2 points against a gutsy Dewsbury side who ran hard and tackled hard, as stated before the worst part was as a spectator there was zero entertainment factor and just a crap game to watch.

Over the seasons, every fan of every sport of every team is guilty of taking single games to represent the narrative for the season. I am trying desperately to avoid falling into that trap, however for me, observation and results are conspiring against Grix. Taking the challenge cup out of it, we won 5 of 16 under Grx (2 of which were against eventually relegated teams). To get into the playoffs across an average season, you need to be winning north of 65% of games. In fact the the year we missed out on the Super 8's under Marshall, we were slightly higher than that. We are nowhere near that level, irrelevant of it being the start of a new season.

The decision I have never been able to get my head around was letting Marshall go when we did. You can have your opinions on the guy on what he did and didn't but he's assistant at Saint and thus a massine endorsement on his abilities as a coach. We replaced him with Grix who has absolutely nothing to formalise anything near any coaching credentials. When you replace a manager / coach and we all know it's far from a linear process, surely it's appointing somebody who will negate whatever issues there are on the field for the benefit of being better in the long run. The fact that there was little to no apparent due process in fielding for a new coach apart from Grix was worrying from the get go. We have now come into this new season with Grix's manifesto seemingly built on a stronger start to the season and the first two games illustrate that we haven't achieved that.

A long journey ahead and probably too early to make any estimates of note but Grix has a huge job on his hands in which we have little evidence to say that he has the ability to take us forward. As I said before, he needs to serve an apprenticeship in a good, professional environment and come back with fresh ideas and approaches on and off the field. I thought that management was taking a new approach to appointing coaches i.e ambitious, young assistants at superleague clubs, ready to take on a first team role. However, maybe that was wishful thinking.

That was JWH, not Salty.

This is the best post in the thread.

We’ve played two games so far this year (excluding pre season which if you even count these as competitive, stop reading now).

Sheffield we looked ordinary, however the first game of the season so good to blow off the cobwebs (and we won).

Tonight was possibly the strangest game of rugby league i’ve ever watched. The atmosphere was dire, the skill levels were at an all time low and overall entertainment was dull.

So much adversity happened during that game. Simon Grix didn’t drop any balls cold tonight. He didn’t get two sin binnings and his brother sent off. Gilmore getting injured early on wasn’t his fault & Elliot Morris only played 40 mins ish which you can only assume was another injury also wasn’t his fault. You cannot expect to win that game with all of the above.

Ultimately the players are responsible for the loss tonight because it wasn’t down to tactics!

People need to give it a rest about Simon. Forget the half a season he was in charge of last season. Focus on this one. At the summer bash if we are way off then yes lets talk about it then. But until then, give the bloke a chance.

That's deluded. We were still competitive and in contention when he took over but we deteriorated rapidly, so I personally won't forget that half season. On the pitch things were for sure unusual but apart from the ref being entirely 100% incompetent of conspiring deliberate against us; clearly discipline isn't high on the agenda or players chose not to avoid situations where they put themselves in a position to get binned or penalised. To be penalised 9-0 is sheer incompetence, even sabotage on the players part but the coach isn't blameless.

After reading the scoreline I was dismayed even a little saddened, then I read the courier report and the offerings above.
I have to agree with some points and disagree with others.
Why Simon Grid was the only name in the frame for coach we may never find out, yes he is raw at coaching a fact that cannot be argued with. Whatever RM did or did not do to hasten his departure will again be shrouded in clouds, it certainly seems his major faults were timings and management. Not to be ready until a quarter of the season was over took some believing.
As for last night S G is not responsible for the penalty count against or the actions of players once the cross the Whiteline, he can try and coach it into them every minute of every session, but once they take the field he is powerless.
What does he do drop players and play lesser said players ? You would all moan at that !
Not the best start but 2 games into the long season give them a chance.
If you think you can do better offer your services to the club, not your mates in the pub!

Going to be a long season. Alarm bells should of ran after we struggled to run in a high score against hull reserves.

No ideas, one man rugby, indiscipline no cover for injured player.

Either use the dual reg or don't bother having it we needed a , yesterday and giants have a decent one who is not getting game time.

comments like the effort was there and we was good etc not sure what he classes as good but that was p1ss poor https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gr1Z8iMdMAI?autoplay=1

comments like the effort was there and we was good etc not sure what he classes as good but that was p1ss poor https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gr1Z8iMdMAI?autoplay=1

defence was good first half. keeping Dewsbury out and not scoring a try was good. defence for two of Dewsbury tries second half poor. try on last play was poor defending, then try on last play kick again terrible.
ref was poor, the head shots were not acted on yet other things were, as for the Dewsbury player complaining to ref near end that morrell had punched him in stomach as ran back for drop out when he had brushed hand against his stomach. players getting as bad as football in claiming fouls.
sykes seemed to ref the game all night.

The only positive I can see from that game is that after that totally shambolic first half we were still in with a shot to win the game near the end. The downside of that is we were in with a chance of winning a game against a team that will finish in the bottom 4 come the end of the season. Not exactly inspiring.

By the time Marshall left we already had a discipline problem and one of my big hopes for this season is that it would be sorted out. On evidence against Sheffield and against Dewsbury it is nowhere near sorted out and the easy option is to blame the ref. Their coach could be heard from the stand shouting that Dewsbury needed to just keep turning up as Halifax would concede penalties and we certainly did not disappoint.

Loing to Dewsbury means we now have to pick up wins against the likely top 4 to be in with any shout of sneaking in to the top 5 and in only playing about 20 minutes of decent rugby all season that is never going to happen. Sad to say but this season should be about getting rid of the dead wood we are carrying and trying to get a plan in place for next season as we are very close to not only slipping away from the top 5 but close to slipping in to the Dewsbury, Batley, and Swinton group of just making up the numbers year in year out.

Regarding the result we lost this game by 2 points having out scored the opposition 3 tries to 2 in spite of all that went on.

It was a real negative eye opener, surprisingly so to see us drop to that level of performance.
Short term it will be tough to avoid being overly critical and negative.
Longer term if it continues it will tough to accept and realize that we are at best a middle to bottom half of the table club and team.

Still early doors yet, however.

Thank goodness it's only a game that's what say.