He was superb - articulate, engaging and intelligent. Unlike the 3 stooges in the gantry

Of course you have to question the fitness of team loosing players to injury doesn't help but the fitness of the squad should be higher to deal with this. In all three games so far this season our fitness has tailed off very worryingly in the latter stages.

Chev just tweeted this "Thanks for all your support it doesn't seem as bad as 1st thought but will know more in next few days I'll keep you posted"

Let's hope it's not as bad as first thought! He has been one of our best performers so far!!

IMO if Herbert isn't ready for the Wakefield game(won't hold my breath) Southernwood has to be given a go as Addy was very ineffective tonight.

Just got back from Cru Cru Crusaders. Well I bet Sky were chuffed they chose that match to show...
Not a classic by any means, but 2 points is 2 points. Hope L'estrange is not too badly injured, it looked really bad at the time. Good job that they were as bad at keeping hold of the ball as we were or it may have been another story.
The tries we concede in the last 10 must be a worry now. Although both of the last two tries given by the VR were laughable, we should have not been in that situation. Ainscough was ace, a breath of fresh air in the side, and when was the last time we had two out and out pacy wingers? Quality. Kearney was everywhere, Addy was very disappointing, as someone said already, think he was trying too hard. Thought Olbi was excellent today, looks like he could be cementing his place in the team.

Oh yeah, forgot about Chev, hope he is not too bad either. We played the whole game practically then with 16 men.

I agree but Potter has made his thoughts on Southernwood pretty clear and I can't see him as the sort of manager who will change his mind unless he is forced to. At the end of the day Potter will know the best out of anyone if he is ready so I will trust his judgement.

A win on the board is the biggest thing to take away from tonight.

Lots of unforced errors and daft penalties (especially on tackles 4 and 5).
That certainly needs to be worked on (and I'm sure it will be).

It has to be remembered that our first choice half backs weren't out there either though.

I started having Cardiff flash backs toward the end!!!

Well let's see.

We're off the mark and have our first 2 points of the campaign. Which I think is where most people expected us to be at this point of the season, however that's perhaps with a worse points for/against total.

The inclusion of Addy at 6 seemed to provide a bit more to the attack than Sykes did last week, however IMO we'd be better served with a proper half back lining up next to Kearney.

It wasn't the most entertaining of games, lots of silly mistakes and a lot of easy ball coughed up from both sides.

Still, the result is what's important, regardless of how that result is arrived at. Mick Potter knows his job and he knows where we fell short and I'm sure he and the team will look to improve against Wakefield next Sunday.

Well we are off the mark and it feels good to get the ball rolling with our season. I had a feeling that if the clock had another 5-10 minutes left we may have collapsed and let another big lead go to waste. When we were 30-10 up I thought we would really kick on a put the Crusaders to the sword but yet again we couldn't close off the game. This could be down to fitness or the fact that we played most of the game with a man down.

The first topic I think we need to address is the discipline of the side at the ruck. We seem to be giving away far too many penalties during the final 3 tackles of the set. There was at least 2 occasions where we gave away penalties on the last tackle, this has to stop. Top teams would have made us pay for the amount of ball we gave away in our own 20

Like some people have said I think we forced some passes in our own half which often resulted in handling errors.

Although there were a few negative points Ainscough's try was superb. A great team try and a never say die attitude to attacking. He (Ainscough) had a fairly decent game after a slowish start. He was very good under the high ball and looked fairly solid when defending the line. I was also impressed with Bryn Hargreaves effort today.

Royston seemed to have his best game in a Bulls shirt and took his try well. Once we have a fully fit squad it would be nice to have him and Kearney fighting for the number 1 jersey.

Hopefully the injuries we picked up were not that serious. I feared the worst when Heath went down clutching his leg. It was good to see him walking off after the final hooter. It wasn't spectacular but we got the points in the bag and we can go into next week with a bit of confidence.

Roll on next week and hopefully we'll have Herbert back and we should be able to pick up another 2 points at home to Wakefield.

I thought the scoreline probably flattered the Crusaders a little but we need to address the loss of concentration in the final 20 minutes. Kicking out on the full, not making touch with a penalty etc are schoolboy errors that will disappoint Potter.

On the plus side I thought we defended well on our own line and scrambled back for the most part. I thought Ainscough looked lively and showed up well for his 1st game of the year. Raynor also made good yards out of dummy half and is starting to find some good form.

I was a little disappointed with Addy, he is a much better prospect than he showed today. However he clearly isn't a stand off and would benefit from playing in his favoured loose forward position.

Glad to have got the two points though, hopefully the injuries we picked up will be offset by the return of the likes of Donaldson and Herbert.

Hard 2 pts, though most of the 'hard' was self impossed. Things to iron out but thats to be expected, more game time will smooth the ruffles. Re-group, dust off and push onwards!!

The first half was steady and the Bulls deserved their lead, the second making silly errors unenforced errors and some poor tackling techniques contributed to them having to back up long periods of defence which will take its toll no matter how fit you are, but the usual muppets (mainly t & a) going on about conditioning seem to miss that point completely. At the moment we seem to be a first half side and don't have the capacity at present to keep going in the second half but that will come once the team start playing like a team without needing to force the pass at the wrong times. Crusaders fortunately were even worse culprits and thats what cost them in the end! There were as many plusses as minuses today. Balsawood didn't disappoint as he was still poor, but Thaler has gone backwards in his development as a ref