I'm not sure it's getting excuses in, merely giving his opinion on how tough it will be. Possibly even a few mind games going on. Anyway if we do get a bit of pasting, we won't be the only side it happens to who travels to Toronto this year.

I think that realistically we are in the Championship for the forseeable future due to the triple threat of the SL pulling up the drawbridge, the new expansion teams that can throw money at squads and also newly relegated teams such as Widnes that can hold onto their SL squad. However the competition in this division seems a lot more even. Would people be happier in this division winning more matches but finishing third or fourth?

The problem with this line of thinking is our current owner, like the last one, has set the club up with the aim of being in SL. It's the reason JK quit his comfortable desk job at Wakey in order to be a head coach once more.Our current set up is not sustainable long term in this division. If we were to accept long term championship rugby then we'd have to go part time losing all our best players and then be competing with the rest of the league for the same journeymen. The academy would have to be downgraded and we'd have to accept that any players we produce, that had any potential above been a part time player, would leave at the first opportunity. The fanbase would shrink along with our income ( we'd have to reduce the high ticket prices )and we'd have no better chance of being a top four championship club as any other in this league.

I thought for where we are in our rebuilding, and first time round in the Championship, it was a very creditable performance. Toronto are very good and improving, and yet knew they had been in a game.

To me, the major difference between the two teams was the tactic that Toronto had obviously decided upon, and that is to attack at all costs and tire us out. It worked, because the lopsided score at the end was the result of them having taken so much petrol out of our tank, and even then we didn't collapse, but scoring became easier as gaps appeared.

the most noticeable factor for me, and which led o us spending large parts of the game trying vainly to get out of our own half, was the simple tactic of running hard after a quick PTB, AND having two or 3 men running close to the ball carrier. This we found hard to cope with, and our one man drives contrasted very poorly with it. Whether we don't have the personnel to regularly send at least a couple of players sprinting with the ball carrier to stretch the defence, I don't know, but it made it very clear that Toronto were in charge, and overall, were a lot more threatening and got a shedload of far better field position.

But like I say, I thought we coped with it pretty well, it was a very stern test and should stand us in good stead for the coming games. We gave them about a 50% better game than I feared we might. A full squad with everyone playing in position would have been interesting.

Surprised that nobody on here pointed out that 2 of Toronto`s tries were scored by us knocking on in our home 20 metre area (which were a few of the times we did not complete a set) and giving them possession . Also the harsh penalty given on Dalton Grant when he appeared to be in the clear only for the ref to say he been tackled, resulted in a Toronto try. So maybe with a bit of luck the score would have been more respectable. Toronto were the better team offensively, moving the ball about swiftly (and getting away with quite a lot of dubious forward passes), but they weren`t as good defensively as I thought they would be. As many have pointed out the defensive effort was magnificent. I also thought Rowan Milnes had is best game so far and is settling into the role after the step up from the academy.
it was a great following and we made more noise than the locals. I know Odsal is not a great stadium these days, but the Lamport Stadium was not great, in fact if the weather had not dried up, because there is no cover, it would have been terrible. We arrived half hour before kick off and it was raining which was bad enough but to make things worse the beer was $9 a drink.

I agree about the ground was glad the rain stopped. Didn’t mind paying the $9.5 a pint for the craft stuff available much better than the majority of crap you get in Uk stadiums for not much less.