Moore has made a huge difference, whether it’s his experience (making the right decisions at the right time) or just making the central defence more solid. When he gathered up that kick off under the noses of the Toulouse defenders I thought that typified what he brings to the team. If we lose him (and it’s highly probable) then I hope we’re looking at bringing in some more experience.

Thought Leon had his best game since he came back. There were some really classy touches, the pass to Oakes for his try especially.

Again, Ryan was superb on the wing, his try was excellent and took a lot of scoring but he’s making a habit of those. The defence was awesome and saved two certain tries.

I thought the forwards did well particularly in the first half. I think we tired a little in the second and this led to more mistakes and indiscipline. That said the second Ryan try that was chalked off looked 100% fine to me. It was a bit of a twitch finish but we got there in the end. Minus 8 now and that’s better than I thought we’d be at this stage.

The Sheffield match was in some of the worst conditions for a good number of years. The Wakey pitch also had a game instantly before that. Plus Sheffield had dual-reg players, Jamie Acton, Lachlan Burr & Sam Hopkins.

Toulouse showed some quality touches yesterday and i think they will pick up a fair few away wins as well and be in the top 4 IMHO. Especially when the grounds harden up.

To be fair, although we didn't use one of the subs, I suspect we did use all 12 interchanges in the forwards. It would have made more sense to have an extra forward though.

It would have done, except he was no doubt there in case of an injury in the backs or halves. No injury happened, so they didn't use him just for the sake of it.

Whilst I tend to agree with the idea of don't use a sub just because he's there, when the interchange could be better used to make sure the forwards don't get tired, I did think Smith could have been brought on in the backs on the right side considering we were starting to get hammered there in the second half. Thankfully it ended up not mattering.

As a matter of interest, does being selected but not actually getting on the pitch, actually counts as an official appearance?

Or, in other words, has he made his debut.....or not.

Doesn't count according to my History of Bradford Northern - Nigel Williams only counts appearances when they make it onto the pitch.

Nigel Williams, that's a blast from the past. I remember him spending years gathering all the stats for his book

His book is the best for any stats up to 1989. The fella must have spent years on it. It's a work of art. Is he still around?

Like a lot of others I was shouting for the introduction of Lee Smith. We looked to be tiring, pressing the self destruct button whilst having an unused experienced head on the subs bench was a gamble which clearly came off. It was a brave (or clever) move by the coach. I think if we had lost, feelings on this thread might have been somewhat different. Still, the end justified the means and a wins a win.

He was the official club historian, though I forget just when his name stopped being heard around.

Nigel always recorded sub appearances as separate to 1 -13 appearances too, which I'm not sure is something that modern historians would do, but of course, back in the 'old days' (not sure when it changed) subs were only allowed in the case of injury, so it was quite common for subs to never appear on the field.

I used to work with him and he spent most of his break times while doing 12 hour shifts manually writing up all the stats. He used to live up Allerton way. He eventually left and published his book and I met him a couple of times after but have not seen or heard of him for quite a few years now.

I'm going to assume he made his fortune and that I can completely abandon my current career plans.

Erm, I probably wouldn't abandon everything straight away

Too late. All in.

Presumably if we had held onto the 28-6 lead for a bit longer he could have played the final 20 mins and then been in better shape to play a bigger part next week. It seemed to me like the sort of calculated risk that coaches have to take which this time didnt work out.