Let's see how the season unfolds. Yesterday may have been a blip but he does get through a hell of a lot of work normally. You need the "un-noticed" players. Players who do the hard graft in defence which often does go unappreciated.

Gene made one of the best tackles I have ever seen yesterday, chased that Ropati for a good 60 yards and stopped a certain try. Who cares about his age, as long as he can make plays like that. He also set Shads 2nd try.

When Stan the man was hitting Stringers arm, was that an offence? I thought Stringer holding onto Gene would have been the offence.

Yes, it is.

But, Stan could have been sent off for kicking out at the player when he was trying to get up. He was lucky to only give away a penalty.

But if the tackler had let go of his feet he wouldn't have needed to kick out. The rules say 'roll away'

remember miles getting a red card for so called kicking out, it was nowhere as bad as what stan did yesterday,i thought he was going to walk for that, but alls well that ends well,

STANLEY STANLEY STANLEY

You miss the point. He deliberately kicked out at the man which is foul play and can be deemed as dangerous play. Stan could have just struggled and earned a penalty for Halifax instead of kicking out.

Nothing says "get off me" quicker than a kick in the chops

I think you too miss the point. I don't think for one minute that Stanley kicked him on purpose, he kicked out to get out of the hands of the tackled, who did not let go. This happens many times, it was just unlucky that it caught the player.

I agree with Fax4Life, Aston has moulded a very good "team" who bust a gut for each other, see how they celebrated when they scored. Their downfall was that they run out of steam, they were knackered at the end, they even struggled to pack down quickly at the last scrum to stop the clock. Let's face it, how many players in the Fax team would you swap for Sheffield players? Very few, if any. Just shows what an excellent coach Aston is. Not saying Calland isn't, he is. But Aston has developed into one of the best, and I'm sure Calland will follow suit.

Aston can certainly spot a player - their centres and full back were excellent.

Aston is a thinker of the game and can read the game so well-likely this is why he was a very good halfback. Not knocking Matt Calland but having a coach who had to organize his side and did it well as Aston did does help in my opinion when coaching as well. I have long thought Aston is the best and most underrated British Coach in the game. For me I think he would do a good job in SL and should have been assistant to Smith not Mcnamara when Smith was England Coach.

There are elements of what you & FAX4LIFE say there that I agree with regarding Aston, but, how about Halifax fans giving Calland & his co-coaches some credit for the win here on sunday ? And, I believe this win was as much about the coaching/team selections as the application of the players on the field. As I posted earlier in the thread, Sheffield lost their intensity in the last 10 mins of each half and Halifax capitalised, a couple of key things contributed to this that I believe will have come from the pre-match plan for the game.
The plan to go with five props was justified for the heavy surface AND the fact that both Aizue & Maloney have had no game time at all for ages. Anyone who has played the game will appreciate these points about sharpness and match fitness.
Not to mention Sam Barlow's "all our forwards are over 100kgs" motivational comment in his interview pre-match in the courier.
And also, the revelation in the after match press conference about Penky "itching to go back on the field", combine this holding Penky back with his own comments in saturday's courier about the relieving him of the singular captain's responsibilities, all contributed to his sharpness around his meat & drink of the ruck area for that winning play late on.
I'd rather we pay more attention to our own club than celebrating other's achievements at their clubs. I've always been an admirer of Mark Aston's work at Sheffield and bump into him often on the kids rugby circuit, he's a great guy & well liked, but he's been at the professional club a very long time and had the opportunity to put his own working practices in place, but let's remember that only two years after winning the challenge cup in 1998 for the highest profile upset in the competition's history, the same Sheffield Eagles lost in 2000 to amateurs Thornhill from Dewsbury !

Let's congratulate our own on a well earned victory against a spirited team, but quality & determination won this for us as well as great leadership from the East stand