Went today with a mate, a Bulls fan of many years. Bit like watching my team, Warrington. Pack neither big nor tough enough giving the halves very little to work off. Was told Bulls seem to be trying to move the ball more but without real go-forward errors occur. Change takes time so give it a few weeks. I'm happy to give Powell a season. First visit to Odsal for years and it brought memories of a few hammerings. Don't mention Catalan and dreading Thursday!

You think we look fit enough?

Besides the performance today that p***ed me off that touch judge really needs to go to Specsavers, some of his decisions were horrendous.

It's strange. It might have been the equivalent of WWII Blitz bunker spirit, but Bongser seems to recall a lot more positivity (and more posters - but the latter's the same everywhere) on this forum during the dark days of the Admin 3 / Liquidation thread - all 4 thousand pages of it.

On that topic, what did become of the tea lady?



The danger that The Bulls (and, for now, generously proportioned Nige) are facing is people getting out of the habit of attending.

Bongser spent a dozen years from the early 90s, trouping about the Home Counties where the pubs wouldn't show RL on the box as a matter of principle. When he finally settled back in the North, it was in South Manchester with a young family and a time-demanding (now ex-) wife. Bongser was out of the habit of attending Leigh games and the club lost (not through their own fault) about 20 years of one man's custom.

Bulls need a new coach in place now rather than later, one who is supported (from above) to plan for next year before more get out of the habit of going.

Agreed. I think they’ve been allowed to play what they see. But the dropped balls, we just gave York ball after ball. I don’t think it was that bad. Effort was there, we scrambled until the 80th minute in defence. We created enough opportunities to win that game and blew them all. We gifted York 2 or 3 opportunities and they were taken. Fitness didn’t seem to drop off in that game, even though we did the majority of defending. Completion rate must have been below 70% .
A big concern was that for the 2nd game in a row there must have been less than 2000 there.

Exactly this

Bulls: Our pitch is too narrow to play expansive rugby
Also Bulls: Is seven times in on game a record for going into touch?

My take on the game...
Positives.
They held us up over the line at least 8 times
Patton and Lilley put tremendous shifts in it's just their timing is way off having been on 'drop off' duty all season
Brad England was immense
Some of the team looked fitter
Had we had Millar in the wing we'd have doubled our try tally
Wallace and Butler looked reasonably class before being injured

Negatives
Walker
Crossley
Having both of the above on the park together.
Stood watching each other when the ball went to ground costing a try
The usual suspects were blowing out of the wrong end after 60 mins causing the usual collapse. (See Walker and Crossley)
Anyone breaking the line is on their own.

It was more entertaining to watch than earlier games but it ws probably one of the most stop/start games I've ever seen

Pretty much all the games are like that now. The 6 again rule is ruining the game. Teams are deliberately interfering early in the tackle count as the "penalty" is of no disadvantage. You get penalised more for kicking the ball dead.

So you’ll be amazed that Crossley was awarded Bulls man of the match in Rugby League Express.
I am not criticising you or the journalist as I’m currently in Australia and obviously couldn’t be at Odsal.

The NRL have re-introduced penalties for ruck interference in the 20m area and it's helped greatly. Why we haven't done the same is anyone's guess. I know we're a few years behind the Aussies but this is a no brainer, we could just do it now and it'd improve the game.

I don't think I am amazed by anything in RL anymore sadly.

Brad England would have been my MoM. He ran his blood to water, seemed to be in every tackle and made a decent break... a break so good in fact the rest of his team mates stopped what they were doing to admire his work.

I reckon the jounalist was in Australia too...

I can see it's going to take time to adapt to a new more expansive gameplan given that we've played up the jumper stuff for ages. It'd also be good to see us try the odd offload as the opposition always kill us with these yet we manage about one a game.

This all depends on us being fit enough but it should be easy to lose the flab (just eat healthily). I'd be interested to see if this happens over the coming weeks.