Both Toronto and Leeds will murder us around the ruck. Dwyer and Ackers will have a field day and everything else will come off the back of this.
Both Featherstone and Halifax [ishould[/i have seen their leads out. We got out of jail twice there imo.

But they didn’t, and that’s mainly down to us being better than them when it counted, no?

As for Ackers and Dwyer you’re 100% right. I expect the same. But then again we’re not yet a team pushing for promotion or competing in SL so I’m not seeing this as a reason to be upset. I think we can give Toronto more of a game than we did in pre-season, even with our misfiring attack.

As for Leeds, I fully expect them to win by at least 30. But that would be no disgrace.

Looking in league Express at the Try, Goal and point scoring charts. I don't remember the last time where not a single Bradford player appeared in any of them. Some people suggest this is exactly the sort of conservative rugby that JK wants but I'm not buying it. We have more points in us, irrespective of the onus he puts on defence.

I agree. Our attacking play is as poor as I can remember but our defence, resilience under pressure and spirit is the best it’s been in many years too. It’s that which is proving the difference in close games.

If we can improve the attack just a bit we can certainly get a top 5 spot.

We rarely seem to have any runners when a ball carrier runs down the line and, though I've already stated my delight at the way Ethan Ryan is taking to fullback, it does do away with our most potent fall-back attacking ploy - when all else fails, which is the new normal, then kick it high out to Ethan's wing.

Why, when someone makes a line break do we never seem to have any runners? Why do so many of our players seem to stop, like rabbits in a headlight, when the ball is passed to them? I'm assuming we have proper attacking moves worked out at training which we could execute?

The annoying thing is I'm happy at the position we're at - we're at the top (ish) end of where I expected us to be and I fully understand that we've had to make quite a few disruptive positional changes for this and that reason and that it's bound to impact on cohesiveness. So why, oh why, do I feel so flat when watching us with ball in hand sometimes?

I'm going to take a more conservative view.... we're in the top 5 which means it's almost unthinkable that we'll be relegated. My fear was that we'd implode, head back down and that would be the end of the Bulls. As it stands we haven't. Are we setting the world alight and pulling up trees? No. Do we need to? No.

The added bonus to all this is there is a pride in the shirt I haven't seen in years and JK seems to have finally banished the 'We're Bradford therefore we should win with minimum effort simple because of our reputation!'

Long may this dull, but acceptable, RL reign!!!

(and I've not heard the phrase 'cutting cloth' in 18 months - though with 15 mins to go and barrow wanging it about I was 'touching cloth')

To be right, I'd guess that JK's intentions would have been all about consolidation this season and not promotion. That said, JK is nothing if not thorough so maybe there's also a plan B for if we overperformed and a plan C for if the wheels had fallen off.

Disagree it wasn't an intentional swing at the players head definitely a penalty for contact to the head, Touchy got that wrong when telling Ref! Hopefully the Judiciary use some common sense when reviewing this!!

Sending off Sufficient verdict for Farrell.

Good result that. Farrell is a real workhorse.

He was only off the field for 30 seconds

Edit: Also forgot to mention my favourite thing about this game - the announcement just after half time about an owner of a car parked in the car park who had somehow managed to leave their engine running

Looking back on the full match video, i'm surprised he's got off with sending off sufficient as I think it was a blatant elbow from Farrell.

Should never have been sent off imo. It's a face saving decision to save the ref's face so far as I can see. If he'd given the holding down penalty in a timely fashion then Farrell would have had no need to try and free himself in order to play the ball.