That was awful, a very lucky win and we have no clue with the ball in hand, nobody taking the line on, no width in our play, and our kicking game is woeful. We look very confused and I've got to wonder about the coaching. For their part Fax are getting the most out of a fairly ordinary squad and look well coached 

Positives
If we can beat the top of the league
away from home when we played poorly then we must have the basis of a very good team. 


Negative 
Another slow start no sign of an improvement in our fluency of play, same mistakes being seen every week.




Mmmm?

I thought we steadied the ship in the 2nd half after a poor first. But, we are still prone to stupid errors and penalties. I thought Doro was huge today. He really put himself about in both attack and defence. Our kicking game is poor, in the main, with quite a few disappointing kicks from various players.  It was only our pretty solid defene that saw us win a game which we would have easily lost in the past. 

I'm going with this...... We won against the (formally) unbeaten top of the league at their ground. They had confidence and belief (as their fans did) that they were going to win. But we won.

I know we looked far from stellar, but this was always going to be a hard game. Their defence didn't leave much room for creativity but we had enough. The players grafted today, with our defense seeing us through.... Meadows gets a lot of grief (and some of the stuff he does is at times bewildering and infuriating) But hats off, that try was superb, so credit where its due.... It doesn't get any easier does? Oldham away..... Hopefully a bit more fluidity in our game for a more asthetically pleasing display? Don't hold your breath.

I?m going to take the positives there. Overall, with the available squad they had, I think that was Halifax more or less as good as they could be. They threw everything they had at us, especially in the first half and our goal line defence was equal to it. 


On the other hand, in attack, we were patchy, errors, 3kicks out on the full, dropped balls, passes in front of runners and behind runners. For the last 5 minutes of the first half, it came together and we cut them open 3 times in 5 minutes. 


The point is, we won and we have a lot of improvement in us still. Halifax were missing a couple of players, but their performance was basically maxed out. 


Let?s get to Oldham

Weird. Where did the ? come from?

Probably can cut the side a bit of slack especially when they dig in for a defensive effort like today. Still a relatively new 6/7 partnership and Tom Holmes missing at FB - although Hooley was rock solid there today.


I genuinely thought it was going to be one of those days where we invited them back into the game in the final few minutes with another poor kick out on the full. In honesty, on another day we might have lost so it really needs tightening up.


But we've beaten the form team on their own patch without playing particularly well with the ball so I am also taking that as a positive at the moment. The Meadows try was a beauty!

Looks like just is and Barrow picking up wins in the top half of the league. 

Maybe you were just questioning if you really believed what you just typed. 

I really enjoyed that game dispite the loss for us and its the first time in a while we have had a really good crowd against the Bulls which always makes it a much better day. As I just posted on the Fax board, really nothing between the two teams, Fax inability to get more points on the board in the first 30 minutes when they were on top ultimatley came back to haunt them and then Bradford were superb after going in front apart from a couple of shaky kicks and were just banging out set after set while Fax were then the team that started making errors as they tried to force things. 

For me like I said at the start of the season, Bradford have the best squad in this division by some distance but for whatever reason it has not clicked and a loss yesterday would have put them in a tricky position but they dug in and given Fax's league position its a really good win for them. For Fax we missed Hansen badly and lacked a lot of direction and for whatever reason played the game with only 16 players but we still had chances to win the game late on so there are still plenty of positives to take away from it and although it would have been nice to be 4 points clear at the top of the league it still feels like we are dreaming been 6 from 7 and 2 points clear.

I'd agree with that. Halifax have made a great start and caught a few sides out playing some good rugby. The challenge for them will be maintaining that when a few injuries inevitably hit. I'm not sure where the big improvement comes for them without recruitment and maintaining what they've done so far for the whole season isn't realistic.


They look likely to be in or around the play offs though which would be an achievement in itself given the off season troubles.


Bradford are clearly not playing to full potential yet, but it's 6 games in for us with a pretty new backline, 6 & 7, starting fb out injured etc. The most pleasing aspect about yesterday was the desire to defend and keep them to nil in that 2nd half - even when we invited them back in with kick errors!

You deserved the win however; to say we can't get better is a little silly. We were missing our starting half (MOTM for the last couple of games) and one of our biggest forwards. 

Really enjoyed the game though and looking forward to more battles!