One (admittedly bad) loss doesn't warrant swapping half the team's roles. I thought Tomkins had one of his better games for us. Not saying much I know but thought he was ok today.

First half was so disappointing. Hull KR didn't do much special they just ran hard and kicked well. And we let them score 5 tries in 30 minutes. Despite that we could have won it. A few players looked like they weren't focussed. Johnson was poor - indecisive, running sidewards, slow to cover kicks. Evalds was poor in defence and attack. Carney was poor too in the first half. We never got on the front foot from our kick returns and that had a big impac. I heard Thorniley interviewed on radio humberside and he talked about how they'd been working on stopping those 3 on kick returns so maybe we should credit KR for that. Their kicking game was very good. But we were dropping off tackles in a way we haven't in the last 5 games. Dobson and GOB seemed to be trying to have a side each to control in the first half and it didn't work

Second half the halves kept worlking on the same side and Lee and Tomkis played pivots at times and we looked like a different team. But once we got within 12 points we started trying to score off every play and made mistakes. We we were playing panic football with 20 minutes left. We made mistakes and invited them back into it when they were starting to break

Thought Dobson and G Griffin were excellent and didn't deserve to be on the losing side

Injuries the curse of our season. The spine of Kelly, Campese and Lunt all missing along with centres Salter and Minns, forwards Larroyer and Donaldson. We had only eighteen fit players and several played with pain killing jabs. Horne and Greenwood were unable to play second half. Get these back and our fortunes will improve but tough at the moment.

Evalds would make as good a job at hooker,as anyone else in the team.
In truth I agree with Mr Sheens view,that he isn't a full back.
Truthfully I would see Evalds in the centres or wing.

is Evalds big enough to play on the wing when it comes to defence? Also I still think we are a big prop short and joseph isn't the answer im afraid (don't know why we signed him tbh). I don't know what Sarsfield is like or Haggerty, so if we ain't gonna play them get rid and bring others in imo and quickly. Lets not forget some of the forwards have being playing a lot of big minutes and this short turn around won't help us at all. Can see some rotation here especially with 2 games in 4 days. Also, imo i'd rather see a bench of big forwards.

You cant just get rid of players because they're not playing, take a look at the injury crisis other teams have suffered so far this season and you'll appreciate the importance of strength in depth.

With regards to yesterdays opening 40 minutes, it was pathetic. After scoring an early try we couldn't have been anymore complacent if we tried and credit to Hull KR they made us pay. If anything sums up how poor we were, Hull KR, bottom of the league (before KO) put 40+ points on us and Maurice Blair ran the show. Awful. Credit to the players for coming back into it at 30-24, had we finished the break we made it would have been 30-30 and you'd have fancied our chances of going on to win the game due to the momentum we had gathered.

I thought the attitude was off yesterday, we scored early quite easily, which perhaps added to the feeling of not needing to play at our best, always a dangerous thing particularly as we are not good enough to do that. From the kick off Griffin didn`t compete then shortly after Johnson gets caught in goal because of a lack of any urgency. Defensively didn`t move up to close them down and when a team gets on a roll its difficult to stop.
That said if Nials pass goes to hand we score and we may be talking about getting out of jail rather than another long drive back from Hull with nothing to show for it !
Collectively though I thought we were off.

rlGame highlights.rl

Big fan of Johnson but his lazy ball return changed the game, he got caught in goal and they scored off the drop out.

My take.
we got off to an easy start off our 1st attack 6-0 , and I got the feeling some of team had started to believe the bookies that we just had to turn up to win .
Hull KR played an very simple energetic fast game & Blair & Cockayne broke our line on numerous occasions and with every score their confidence rose. by the end of the half they looked like world beaters .

Watson did Ok Job in the HT team talk & we made a fair attempt to reverse the 1st half debacle . we could have got back to 38-36 but we were guilty of too many forced plays in trying to catch up .
things we learnt :-
1.we must start with Flanagan in the pack for his tackling, we missed Liu .
2. If we go out without the team attitude on the field we'll get pasted , no matter who we face.
3. Evalds needed more game time. played about 30 minutes all season mostly covering wing , them threw him on cold at Full back

That was true of Evalds & Griffin too , far too much jogging back to collect &doing half hearted jigs back up the field as the defensive line closed in.
Need to take a page from Widnes play book :- run hard & fast to collect the kick ,don't kid yourself run hard & straight to claim field position to set your team up for your set of six midfield .

we was poor for the majority of the game. Carney was shocking yesterday- his defending caught out of position and steps inside too much. we looked knackered in the first half. The issue we have is our bench is poor. Logan ok this season but better hooker next year. Im sure forster and other forwards would do a better job than joeseph.

Missing hauraki. When vidot is back he goes into the centres and move sau into the second row. Jones got a knock yesterday.

George griffin and koppy only 2 who played well yesterday.

Agree with Younger Griffin & Kopzac

However I must defend Carney ( Even if he can't ... ) .

He is current Top metre maker in SL 990 mtrs, ( Josh Griffin is 2nd-895mtrs ) and in the top 10 carries ( 101) .
this is a testimony to the reliance on Carney & Griffin to drive us out & cover our forwards. Carney is busting a gut doing this and this must affect in defence.

I highlighted this about a week ago to plenty of silence. Carney is doing a different job than he had at Cas, and he's doing a good job of it. Watsheens has told him to come in and get involved and he's doing the work of an extra forward, rather than sit out on the wing and wait for walk-ins.

Agree that Carney has been superb this season and made us plenty of metres but still thought he didn't play well yesterday. Not on his own there but true nonetheless. Everyone can have an off day. To be fair hull KR played it right. I think they only kicked long to him once and targeted Carney to run at with an overlap. They realised that we don't move across on that side so well. I think that O'Brien was defending on that side too and they realised he wasn't used to that position having played FB all season. Smart play