I'm not one to kick a man when he is down & while I have enjoyed the schadenfreude I have laid off Deacon this season compared to previous. He has been a loyal servant, no doubt, but one intelligent enough to be quite aware of his limitations. Not many seem to be picking up on the correlation between playing behind an awesome pack & giant, athletic backs, compared with a bunch of dinterested muppets. With the amount of time & space they created any HB, even decent amateurs, would have the opportunities to look good. Fortunately for Deacon he was blessed with a world class kicking game, which he had every chance to use as the vast majority of games you dominated opposition 20m lines.
Now he doesn't have the luxury of time & space he is shown for what he is - someone without the natural speed or talent to cope at SL level. Without that time his kicking has gone to pieces. I don't think other teams have suddenly realised this & are signalling him out, they just get far more chances to do it now. When he should be stepping up & leading by example he seems to be shrinking into his shell, knowing he doesn't have the ability to do anything about it.

FM if Stuart Littler can score against us, we have no hope

Sykes and Worrincy 2 of the Bulls top scorers are 2 of those.

Apologies if the comment has already been made (I don't tend to read the pages and pages of posts after a game), but I've seen a lot of comment about how our signings have been poor and not good enough.

I would like to make the suggestion though that the poor performers in our side are not the new signings. In fact, the two players I consider to be performing the worst (considering what we know they have both done in the past) are the ones who've been here the longest.

There's been plenty of comment already about Mr. Deacon, who is no doubt in a really bad run of form. The other would be Jamie Langley. He is still pretty solid in defence and I struggle to criticise that side of his game. However his attack is absolutely pointless. It's exactly the same run every single time he gets the ball. Collects it just inside the dummy half and runs in a straight line to the nearest defender, making no yards after the collision and never ever offloading.

It's got to the point where I wouldn't even give Langley the ball. Just leave him on the field to defend (which is undoubtedly what he does best) and pretend he's not there when attacking.

Such a shame really as only a couple of years ago, he looks like he was going to be a England/GB regular for years to come.

Your last comment there says everything about the current coaching set-up. Players who looked like being more than adequate replacements for the core squad of the glory years have gone backwards so fast they're nearly folding in on themselves.

As Chairman Mao once said '[iThe fish rots from the head down[/i', and Bradford's season is starting to smell like a month-old kipper.

As a Salford fan I agree. He is truely awful and just isnt SL standard.

Not much to add to the previous comments except I don't think it is fair to highlight one player for criticism because they all made errors at times. Sherrife took a few knocks and perhaps it's not surprising that he was not at his best.

Highlights of the game for me were Bentham getting knocked over by the Salford player and the chanting at the Salford mascot 'do the social know you're here?'. A bit of light relief on another depressing night.

mac for the sack lol

The exchanges between the two mascots during the first half actually made it difficult to watch the match (and I don't mean that in a bad way). The two were quite entertaining, so most of our fans were trying to watch both that and the game itself.

It's a shame they couldn't carry it on in the second half, as I would have welcomed a distraction from quite a bit of that.

that's more accurate

the only way to cheer yourself up as a hull fan is to come on here and read your comments ,thank fook mac turned us down

at least we can point to the fact we have about 8/9 players out ,u look like a complete overall is needed we just need a scrum half

Probably as sensible a post as anybody's so far.

The way i see it, we have shot ourselves in the foot yet again, but not quite the same way as usual. On this occasion, we pretty much blasted Salford off the park, and there was nothing they could do about it.

The problem was, WE could do something about it. I think we actually got over their line 6 or 7 times but contrived somehow not to score any of them. Now, RL is a game of momentum, and if a team manages to get on a roll, it can and often does result in an easy looking win. BUT you do need to get the points on the board when you are on a roll. Every time you don't, it is a psychological blow to you, and a boost to your opponents.

As I say, we bombed tries one way or another at least half a dozen times.

(Including a very weird effort where Lynch scored, as far as I could see the in goal judge (whose sole job it is) was happy, but the try was chalked off. )

What's the point of all this? Well, a few...you went over our line 4 times and lost the ball with the line open- obvious statement of the year but what a difference that makes- you score a couple of them and everyone's saying what a solid performance/win tonight was for you.'"

As I said, there's no way you can criticise his defence. He never seems to struggle in that side of his game.

However last night, I was deliberately watching Langley. In the last few games I'd thought he was poor in attack, so I kind of made a point to watch him specifically, to see if I was just not noticing good things (as can easily be the case).

Sadly, all it did was confirm my original thoughts that in attack, he is doing nothing at all. If the game was on tv, I'd have recommended watching the replay and watching him particularly, as I did. He offered absolutely nothing in attack.

However in no way do I think he's the only one doing this, just one that seems to have stood out for me this season.

As far as the rest of your post goes though, I think you're fairly spot on with the lot. I fully agree that Platt is getting singled out unfairly when, apart from the mistake he made from the 40-20 last night, I didn't think he was that bad.
Also agree with us making the chances and just not finishing them. In fact, I sent a couple of texts at half time and a little into the second half to the tune of "we're all over them, we've had all the possession, the game is pretty much played in their half, we're just not finishing it off".


Oh, and regarding the in-goal touch judge, I was complaining about that a little at the game. Not because I thought it was a try or anything, as I was at the wrong side to see if it was or not. But how the touch judge at the side seemed to somehow have a better view than the bloke stood two yards in front of it, I'll never know. Either one was over-ruled, or the bloke stood in-goal was completely and totally useless, coz at the end of the day, those rulings are exactly what he's there for.

Regarding the Lynch disallowed try, I thought Salford had a fair call for obstruction anyway despite it being disallowed for a knock on. Koppy certainly appeared to obstruct some of the Salford defenders.

We were stood in the corner and had a similar view to the touch judge who disallowed it and it was pretty clear that he lost the ball.