Hallas was a blow. After 15minutes, especially as he’s usually good for 50+ tackles a game. And I thought we were fairly comfortable for the first 15minutes. Immediately, all our middles will have to do an extra 5minutes per stint - at least 2 more defensive sets each - which in game terms fitted in with Fevs 2 “purple patches”. And the individual errors, just invited workload. If you drop the ball, you invite back to back defensive sets, which are tiring. In summary, I thought the positives from that game far outweighed any negatives.
And anyway - those taking the Mickey about Ant Walker - did you see Dale Ferguson? He was at least 1 1/2 Ant Walkers....

I agree that there is reason for optimism when we have Lilley, England and Murphy available.

I’m not sure about the quality of a lot of our new signings, although I’ll obviously give them time and hope they improve.

I don’t understand why we’d play players that are clearly unfit in a competitive game though. Was Nzongou available? He looked in much better shape than Walker. If he’s not worth a place over someone so unfit who has been out of the game for so long then why is he part of our squad?

You mean the Ferguson that broke through a tackle, offloaded and created a try? How many times did any of our forwards do that?

Defensively we looked like 13 Michael Worrincys.

First time in a long while I've been p155ed off at our performance. The amount of tries from walking through the defensive line was unforgivable.

Looked like they hadn't held a rugby ball for a year in most cases.

Felt sick that I'd let my heart rule my head and spent > £500 on season tickets last week .

A few bright spots but that's like saying it was impressive how the lifeboats on the Titanic floated...

It's gonna be a long, painful season.

You won't be the only team that gets hammered by Fev this season. I thought you did ok in spells but it was clear your big forwards were running out of steam, Its strange Bradford going in that direction with the new rule changes that obviousy favour more mobile long minute players, and Fev took full advantage. We have only seen a few games this season but from what I have seen Im now expecting a very distinct top 3, allowing for Toulouse competing, and then throw a blanket over the rest and oldham very clear at the bottom. Those 3 teams will never get a better chance to get in to SL so there is a lot at stake for them.

I know what you're saying about the big blokes and the new rules but I think there's still a place for them. Looking at the NRL there are still a lot of teams using them. The difference is they're actually quite fit. You still need them to get the team moving forward. Look at the likes of Fonua Blake and Papalii, not exactly skinny but have great engines.

Hopefully we do sign Evans and we can get him in the side soon. I don't think Walker will figure again against the top sides until he can shift a couple of stones worth of lard. He was only on the field for 5 mins before he was having a breather at marker. It's not worth having someone in the side that can be so easily exposed against the good teams.

That's one of the funniest hot takes I've seen...I know which one I'd rather have running at me...

C'mon pal, context...

I accept that their overweight impact forward, who was not used for 60minutes because they had the luxury of rotating their other 3 forwards on the bench to keep him fresh until they could put him on against tired opposition forwards, would have an impact....but that's as far as I'll go lol

It is noteworthy that of the 34 players on the pitch, only 1 went off with a muscle injury, which is usually a sign of a poor warmup or poor conditioning - and that was Mr Ferguson, who only played about 10minutes before pulling his hamstring, according to a post on the Fev forum.

Of the 34 players on the pitch we had more with obviously massive guts, usually a sign of no conditioning.

That said I agree re Hallas. He's a workhorse for us and we missed that.

You've said this a few times - Walker, I get. Crossley? Is that the other one? His build looked similar to the last few seasons. Fleming , Scurr as the other 2 props looked solid. Gallagher, rooks, Hallas all looked in good condition. Nothing much had changed with Flanagan. Doyle looked to have bulked up (power) a little. In fact all the younger guys looked like they have added a few kg of muscle over the last year. Maybe Scurr gone too much for power, not enough mobility? So I make that 2. Fev had 1.

For me I look at how often we had players left on the ground at the ruck (often), how many were having a breather at marker (plenty) and how much line speed we showed, particularly when we had the slope (not much). Did we pressure the kickers? Did we have support runners around the ball in attack? What was the chasing team like from kicks? How many times were the forwards walking back after we fielded a kick.

All these areas of the game we were miles off compared to Fev who I think have had the same opportunities to train as us. I know they have better players than us and we did lose Hallas but we looked well off the pace fitness-wise.

wow I hadn't picked up on that

Bullseye is correct. Our line speed was shocking. Featherstone were past the gain line before our defence made a move.

Plus the difference between our performance at the start of each half compared to the 20/25 minute mark is alarming. We actually scored some nice tries and missed a chance or two. Then couldn't stop Fev running through the middle of us owing to fatigue at the ruck.

a little late, just saw highlights .. how good does fevs ground look