Hopefully with Keyes now fit, we can see them two gel together. Joe Brown looked excellent yesterday and should be given the 1 shirt now until the end of the season. Was interesting to see how vocal he was too which was impressive for such a young man.

Apart from Ryan & possibly Brown I'm not sure who else is approaching SL standard. York are in a similar position. Though one of their fans I was talking to was bigging up Robinson as the next Danny Brough. I didn't see that to be honest. Both clubs would need huge investment to make the next step.

Can't complain about any lack of effort yesterday. We just aren't clinical enough and fail to take our chances. Will be interesting to see the highlights but there are a few things that stick in my mind.

Firstly how inconsistent Ethan Ryan has been since a) he was switched to full back, and b) the rumours of him signing at HKR came out. For me he's playing ok for a Championship player and is nowhere near SL standard. If I were HKR i'd be worried about his lack of form and ability to cut out silly mistakes and loose carries.

Secondly, team selection was again appalling. I was lucky enough to be invited to see the captains run on Saturday and we got to see first hand the starting 17 put through their paces. I couldn't quite believe why we went with only two recognised props, especially when Bustin and Magrin were fit enough to play an active part in the full session. Yes they have both made mistakes but when they are carrying the weight of the team going forward in reduced numbers, its going to cause fatigue and missed tackles.

Third, I said in an earlier thread how poor I thought Steve Crossley was. I was slated at the time but I see a few are actually also coming forward now and saying the same thing. He's slow, lacks mobility and loses the collision pretty much every carry. Yes he might be a leader but when the leaders are failing to lead by example, what does that say to the rest of the team? But yet again, Kear gushes about how good he was. Sorry John, but you're losing the plot mate.

And there goes the issue... Kear's stubbornness and failure to adapt to the challenges faced. I've said before and I'll say it again. I'm not suggesting we make a change to the coaching team but someone has to stand up and say that for the level of investment in the squad (the 4th highest in the Championship supposedly) we have underachieved, both last year (highest spenders and had to scrap in via the playoffs) and this year.

If we don't make Top 5, at the very least I would hope that a discussion goes on behind the scenes about the playing style as I'm not sure I could cope with another year of five drives and a kick without my head exploding!!!

Elliot top of tackle count yesterday with 49.
Is it too many?
I’d like to see him more as an attacking threat

To be fair I think our attack is much much better than the 1 up stuff we were doing earlier in the year. Everyone gushes about Ford's style of play (rightly IMO) and Kears boring style, but two of our tries were excellent rugby drawing the man in and getting the Winger in the corner. York scored an intercept , a virtual own try by Ryan and another off a kick. If that had been us we'd have been going potty about our attack. There were moments in the game we seemed to lose our way, but overall I thought we threw the ball about well and have been doing for weeks. Concentrationand schoolboy errors are our biggest issue at the moment.

Agree on the rest though.

To be fair to Kear our attacking shape has been massively hindered by the injuries to Keyes and Milnes and the fallout with Chisholm. Our loss of bunch of props at the beginning of the season hasn’t helped.

It’s hard to chuck the ball around if you’re playing with your umpteenth combination of playmakers or lack go forward because the big men are injured.

It’s no coincidence that we’ve looked better in attack since Keyes returned. We out scored York in terms of tries yesterday so must be doing something right.

You could say that all teams get injuries and to an extent I agree. However I also factor in our relative inexperience in some positions and the fact that we’re coming up from L1. I’d say 5th or 6th is probably no more than we deserve and should expect, whatever you believe we’ve spent.

I do agree there are issues and 2020 is the last year of Kear’s contract. Next year I’ll expect to see further improvement across the board. The team has a lot of bad habits and tends to cut corners in a lot of ways. I expect the coach to slowly sort these issues out and get rid of players that aren’t up to it. Given that Kear didn’t recruit a large part of the squad I expect next year to be much more a side that he’s put together.

I agree that Ryan has lost a little bit of form. It happens. As for Crossley I’d be very surprised if he isn’t our biggest metre maker with Connor Farrell. They both have issues, e.g Crossley for landing on his back and having a really slow PTB or Farrell for running too laterally. I think their plus points outweigh the negatives for now. Magrin and Bustin have moments when they lose concentration in defence and I think that will see both out of the door at the end of the season.

On Mini I agree with tigertot's point. We need him involved more. I'm still waiting for the link with Keyes we saw used so well last year to get going again. I also think he needs more support. More often than not he creates space when he runs inside but nobody runs a line in support. That's a wider issue too. Our support play isn't good enough and players too often stand and admire a teammate's run rather than back up.

It was mentioned in the commentary yesterday that Bulls have been involved in 11 matches where the score has been less than 6 either way. Does anyone know how many of the matches we have lost would have been won had we had a 85% lick rate.

I think we must be held up over the line more than any team playing. Is this because we can't think of anything else to put on close to the line?

That’s occurred to me too.

I’d love to know how many times we’ve handed the ball over to the opposition on the 6th tackle too rather than put in a kick. That drives me nuts as it does when Kear is a co-commentator and says something like “it’s not a bad place to hand the ball over”. To me it’s poor play unless it was a genuine attempt to score on the last play. Often we hand it over when we seem to run out of ideas.

Interesting stat – we average 34 points scored per game since Keyes came back. Before then we averaged 19 points a game.

Tried without evidence!!! You are starting to sound like uncle John.

Don't seem to have the mental toughness to build a long run of positive results.

Whatever the read n is I don't know.

It could be argued age and injuries, however.

Suggest you take a look at the highlights reel for the evidence... Evans takes a blatant swing to the mush from Whiteley and should have probably been binned at the very least.

Ultimately it was missed by both the ref and the linesman and ended up in a try from the immediate set of six, rather ironically from Whiteley.

Again another example where York have been on the end of some good luck/bad call from the officials.

How many cup finals are there? Lol!

It’s as clear as day on the video. The touch judge is stood in front of it too.

85-90% really? That's fantasy land. Anyone performing with that success rate would be in the top handful in the world, and probably at the very top.