To be fair, I think there are similarities between the position you're in this season coming and the one we were in at the start of last season; plenty of good players but many are new to the club and there is a fair bit of uncertainty in just how they are going to 'go'. Funnily enough, the one thing we really envied from your set up last season was the fact you had a settled side - and I still feel it was your tactics which let you down last year and not the quality of the individuals in your team.

It's going to be interesting when we hit the business end!

Any team trying to get promoted has the handicap of playing a lot of games that aren’t going to be much of a test and so it’s easy to develop bad habits that won’t be exposed by the lesser sides but will be ruthlessly targeted by the SL sides.

That was certainly the situation with us last year. It seemed to be the situation with Leigh too who started the 8s with some decent performances but didn’t manage to get any wins but by the end were pretty dismal. For us it was the same apart from vs Salford and in the MPG.

Leigh have a lot of quality on paper. How that translates onto the pitch by the 8s is going to be interesting. It’s easy to look good versus the likes of Swinton and Oldham compared with the likes of Hull KR, Widnes etc. It might be a shock when they come along after so many easy games. A decent cup run proved to be no help when it came to competing in the 8s either. Will that extra quality prove to be enough to get Leigh up? I’m not sure.

As for us we have some decent depth (apart from at halfback). I think we may be looking at recruitment later in the season and try and do a “Wakefield”. I’m not sure we have the quality we need so the key for us is Lowes ensuring we arrive at the business end with our best 17 in good shape and not fatigued from having too much rugby as was the case with the likes of at least O’Brien and Pitts last season.

That means a regular rotation of players for a change. One that’s a test of man management skills but it needs to happen.

Listening to Lowes on BBC radio Leeds it seems he's learnt from last year's mistakes as he made a point of saying he would rotate more, particularly Clough and Sidlow.

Interestingly he also said the Nielsen situation wasn't dead in the water, but due to the situation with his mum being ill, both parties said they would leave it for now and maybe pick it up later in year. 99.9 % certain we won't see Nielsen in a Bulls shirt again but you never know...

You lost 6 games in the Qualifiers.

Talking about Derek's Comments on going undefeated in The Championship.

Sure didn't look like it

Posted by roger daly on Thu Dec 31, 2015 2:14 pm
I can see Leigh going the whole season unbeaten and that includes the challenge cup



Lowtown Sparrow do you agree with my above comment from 31st December

Have I missed news about Karl Davies? Didn't play for us last year, strong rumours he won't play for us at all, but I don't think I've seen anything official? Unless I just missed it. I'm sure when someone (forget who, maybe Robbie) was talking about our prop options this year, Davies' name wasn't even mentioned.

Pretty sure he was shown the door.

And another thing, why are we only signing players with identikit names any more? it's getting as boring as snooker. We were good when we wouldn't sign a player unless he had a proper name like Vainikolo or Vaikona. And at least there is hope in snooker, with such as Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon rising in the ranks, but what have we got? "Davies", ffs.

I've heard pretty strong rumours about him retiring and/or being released, but I'm sure I've not actually seen anything official or even a slight hint from the club themselves. Don't even recall reading anything in the T&A about it, although perhaps it was a paragraph at the bottom of another article. Just seems to have dropped off the face of the planet.

"Released" last July. To where I don't know.

How has a Bulls thread about Nielsen been turned into a forum for Leigh fans to once again tell everybody how good they think they are?

They really are a special bunch of people.

In a very silent way by the looks of things. Odd.