I think the inability of one or two individuals to deal with the bomb cost us the game today. They scored two tries in the second half directly from mistakes from Mathers and Blythe, and I counted three occasions where they let the ball hit the deck from the bomb. James Clare on the other hand showed them how to deal with the bomb - he was excellent.

It's difficult not to be sore about that penalty at the end though. For one, I have no idea why it was given and I hope someone can clear that one up. Second, from where I was stood behind the posts, it looked wide. Not the reason we lost the point, but makes it harder to take.

I was really disappointed with some of the individual errors today (Blythe's knock on, Gaskell's kick out on the full, the myriad of forward passes & Addy knocking on on the last tackle with Gaskell back deep for the DG). Those issues gave Batley an opportunity to get back in the game and they took it very well. If the game went on another 5 minutes we could have been on the end of a defeat. The other issue was our game management. Very poor indeed.

Anyway, another great advert for Championship rugby. Batley look very well drilled and should be in the mix for a Middle 8's place if they carry on this form.

Green and Ferres won't say anything but I just can't imagine Jimmy being there next November. They must look at the performances and wonder if another coach could get more from them.

Agree entirely with those saying we shouldn't have been in position for barley to get draw. But I expected us to struggle in forwards with sidlow and kavanagh missing.
Taking OB off was a tactical mistake IMO, unless he was injured. This wasn't game to try and filter Thomas in.

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No you weren't. You were the best team for an hour, got into a position at 24 - 12 where you should have kicked on and won easily, but for some unaccountable reason took your foot off the gas.

When you threw the ball about, you looked great, but then decided to turn it into a forward battle, and got beat up! As several have said on here, poor game management lost you the game, not the ref!

If we don't Q for SL this year and Jim is still there next year you can kiss good bye to a load of fans

Tbh you guys have nothing to worry about. By far the best team we have played this season. Even with the injuries in your pack I thought you won the collisions and played with more pace than us, just had an off day with a number of brain facts costing you an easy win. Great to see you all there. Thanks for turning up in such great numbers and good luck for the rest of the season.

The ref made a few questionable calls throughout the game. Certainly in the first half Ainscough should have been sin binned for a professional foul on Gaskell and several of the "forward pass" calls were questionable.

But really, we should have put the game to bed at 24-12. We had opportunity to score several times but just seemed to desperate to off load rather than just take the ball forward

Why are people talking about how they think we'll do in the Middle 8's based on a game in March against a team that's going all out from the off with the aim of picking up as many points as they can now.

If the game last week had been on yesterday's draw would have probably put us top and u beaten without getting going.

I'd say we're in good shape and personally I don't want them playing their best stuff when it doesn't matter.

Smell of wee?

Also Batley have now beaten Leigh and drawn with Bradford. They'll take points off a lot more sides before the end of the season.

Although after being 24-12 up and giving away a penalty on the hooter it's a point dropped rather than a point gained.

On the plus side, AoB was rotated & given a rest.... Which we've been calling for for a while now! I think this comes under "game management learning required" - but for the coach this time rather than the players.

I asked the reserve ref after the game and the penalty was for a grapple tackle
Not sure if it was right or if the goal went over
Having said that how many times did the Bulls let the ball bounce off high kicks
Cost you in the end
Still the best team we've come up against so far this season good luck
Jimmy lost it a bit with the Bulls fan whilst been interviewed by rugby am
The fan was escorted out

A grapple tackle?! The saga gets worse.

Thought we did all the hard work and threw it away, to be honest.

The forwards were immense and took the game to a very physical Batley side - maybe not the game to have two forwards making their season debut, but you have to take the hand you're dealt and the physical side was dealt with well for the most part with a big Batley pack being largely nullified on their own 'midden'. We lost our way in the last 20mins though and should have kept up the intensity or, at the very least, 'managed' the end better than we did.

Don't know about the penalty or the conversion, these are decisions which sometimes go your way and sometimes go the way of your opponents, so it's barmy to blame the referee for us dropping a point we should have kept. For the real reasons, we need to look nearer home, imo. At the end of the day, Batley did well to come back and you can't say they didn't deserve their point, so good luck to them.

First the good things. I though Clare and Caro did a superb job of taking a lot of high kicks under pressure. It forced Batley to change tactics. I thought Pitts ran some great lines and worked very hard. His first half try was very well worked. I was pleased to see Mitch Clark carry the ball so strongly – he’s a big handful and a real plus off the bench. It was good to see Paul Clough back. We scored enough points get in a winning position despite having thrown possession and field position away constantly. Finally I thought our defence was pretty good for long periods too.

Less good things. Our game management was atrocious – particularly as the game went on. Our kicking game was very poor. We failed to build any pressure. Gaskell’s kicking from the hand is poor and Addy was anonymous. We should have been pegging Batley in their own quarter in the second half but we let them make cheap yards through poor kicks and ill-discipline.

Clark spoiled a good game with two needless penalties but he wasn’t alone. The one at the death looked fairly innocuous to me but Clough did seem to have the Batley player around the throat. A few times we either gave cheap yards away or made an error then compounded it with a penalty. The penalty at the end looked good to me despite fans in the stand complaining it was wide.

When we had the ball we didn’t look slick enough and we let the pressure off countless times with errors and forward passes. The obstruction we gave away in the first half was bad. We were trying to play it fast but it seemed to be too forced and it wasn’t fluid enough to pay off. In the second half I think we lost composure. When Clark made the break he needed to slow down in order to execute an accurate pass to Gaskell. Instead he threw it forward. That missed chance cost us 2pts.

When Batley came back into it we should have gone for 1 point. You could see Lowes signalling for it at the side of the pitch near the bottom corner – he came down from the stand to try to get his point over. Did either of our playmakers take any notice? No. We lack leadership in the middle. Gaskell isn’t really that kind of player and Addy isn’t a natural half or consistent enough. He was sadly lacking. Batley’s halfbacks aren’t world beaters but they put in quality kicks at the end of each set which came off twice when they started kicking to the middle rather than the wings. What was Matty Blythe doing under that kick? Where was Mathers. Why did we let so many bounce?

Overall a point lost for us but Batley deserved the draw. They played it simple and effective. They were better drilled – which was an indictment of our players who have all week to practice. On the occasions we clicked we did look decent but it was in the main far too scrappy from us. Batley also scored the best try when Ulugia sold a huge dummy to Caro and then passed inside.

It’s not the end of the world but for me it highlighted our lack of a decent playmaking halfback. We will need to address this for the middle 8s or we might as well not bother.