Riley has his detractors but he gives 100% every game, you can see it means something to him and if a player has a true love of the club and gives his all, i can overlook the odd bad performance because all i want more than anything is that the guys try their best

happy with Monas' defending all the time......?

He gets no criticism whatsoever...he's almost twice Rileys size, yet he drops off tackles, makes miss reads, and gets done for pace on the outside...and gets away with the forum crap scot free

its absoluutely ridiculous some of the anti chris Riley Rubbish. Monas Has no pace whatsoever none......none at all....he's a great winger because he can finish close range tries exceptionally well.... would he have finished ryan Halls interception try though ? nope......

and as already mentioned had riley not done what he did While Monas had resigned himself to watching Hall go and Score we'd have lost.......

by the way I'm not averse to Williams Bashing though I know real rubbish when I see it...

I wouldn't agree. We heard similar things with Kev Penny when he played outside Matt King, but King shown himself to be a terrific defender. Both Riley and Atkins have been shown up a bit this year in defence, but I wouldn't blame it on one of them, I'd blame both.

It's not rubbish, though. He's made his fair share of mistakes this year, especially in defence. I'd say he's made more than Joel Monaghan and I'd say Monaghan has contributed more in attack. I don't think Monaghan is exempt from criticism, his lack of pace is often bemoaned on here, but he's clearly a better and more dependable player than Riley. Riley is a solid player who's had a patchy season, he's been around long enough to get a bit of criticism when he deserves it.

The one major problem with Riley is his size & he is always conscious of being bundled into touch with the ball so nine times out of ten he comes inside where he also runs into heavy traffic , but i think we've all seen him tackle some of the biggest bruisers in the game at one time or another. He does seem to me to be more comfortable going forward when he comes inside to play prop well away from the touchline ,but i was very pleased with his in field kick that set Higham up against Wigan.


As for Williams...although he didn't set the world alight at Bradford ,neither did he do anything wrong.

I was saying the same at the time. Remember him doing the same away at Wigan in 2010 when he kept Pat Richards out wide, who then missed the conversion.

Really good point Mark.

Yep Riley's try definitely saved us a couple of points, which proved crucial in the final count-up.

I thought he defended ok on Friday. If anything, it was Joel who had a shocker in the first 15 minutes, got a bit of a bollocking from the coaching staff and was back at the top of his game for the next 65.

Watched the game back last night and we weren't nearly as bad as people were saying on Friday in the heat of the moment. Handling was not nearly good enough, but our forwards absolutely beasted Leeds'.

If we're giving brownie points for Riley chasing Hall down, can I suggest you look at the Sutcliffe try again?

Riley lost ground on him after starting only w or 3 metres behind.

However, watch how Cooper and Hill never gave up and prevented Sutcliffe from scoring closer to the posts. A huge effort from the two of them.

Reilly, for reasons known only to himself, went towards Jones-Bishop.

Side issue, but related ......

As Hall ran in that try (past us in the South Stand) I immediately turned to my lad and said "What's happened to his speed?" .....

I've checked against the game on tv and from his first running step to crossing the line (ie- discounting taking the ball under his arm and the final stoop to ground the ball) he covered 90m in 11.1 seconds ...... that's terrible compared to a couple of years back ..... no wonder Reilly was able to run back on a diagonal (probably 100m+) and still get to him.

I can only assume, as with Atkins for us, he now spends more time doing upper body strength work in the gym than he does on his flexibility and sprint co-ordination.

He might not be Usain Bolt, but that's still pretty good going. I'm a young whippersnapper and when I'm reffing I probably run 90m in 11 seconds.

Ithink you will find it is easier to run faster without the ball than with it , plus Hall's work in the gym paid off with the hand off