No I think we are aware that players will need replacing, although its not like the whole side will retire together. But remember we were top of the league going into today and have beaten the SL champions Wigan twice on their own park in the last two meetings between the sides....so the faith is not misplaced.

I remember an ageing Wigan pack, under Mike Gregory, with Craig Smith, Pongia, Terry O'Connor and Cassidy in it, getting to the Grand Final...unfortunately Wigan recruited badly for a few years after that and went downhill, so we have to get the recruitment decisions right.

May I respectfully suggest that attacking your own line really is a reason to panic?

The forward pass decision from the Briers break was crucial, RL is all about momentum, and we would have had it then. I'm not sure if it was a good/ball call, I just thought straight away that line breaks from us had been so sparce and it would have been a great time with circa 10 mins left to score, really boost our energy levels and really ask Hull to dig deep.

We have beaten for the third time by a team that matched (bettered?) us for physical presence and by a game-plan that consisted of playing very narrow around the ruck and carrying the ball back against the ruck into the hole that is consistently left by our second marker not holding position. Very basic from Hull but they were prepared to be patient and wait for our mistakes and for a couple of gifts from the officials. On the other hand, we lacked composure and were not prepared to build pressure.

I think Agar has been watching a replay of the Huddersfield game from a few weeks ago. On the other hand, they may have just played that way that due to the absence of Long as they hardy used a pivot all game. Not sure which is the real reason!

Ok, I must have gone to a different game to most posters, but what I saw, the better team won. To blame the ref, fair enough. Nothing wrong with Westwood's try, but the pass for our 1st try was a yard forward.

The facts are Fitzgimmon was mom by a country mile, Whiting( out of position was excellent), Gleeson was solid in defense and Obst ran the midfield. We had westwood (as usual) and the rest stayed in Salford.

Sorry to burst some bubbles, but our side is not championship material. Just open your eyes.

It was the correct call. However this was virtually the only forward pass in the whole game that Thaler called. The amount that both he, and in particular the touch judges, missed or ignored today was appalling.

Not making excuses however. as the title of the thread states the better team won today.

And Craig Fitzgibbon is as much a freak of nature as Benny Westwood. If you had these 2 on the same team you wouldnt need anymore forwards.

Fitz is an absolute machine, the guy is a great example to any young player, he run his guts out every week makes 40-50 tackles a game aswell as numerous hitups and he's a born leader it's been a pleasure to watch him at Hull for two years and will be near impossible to replace imo.

you havent burst my bubble pal I'm living the Feckin dream....

2nd in the league, holders for the last two years of the most famous trophy in the game, have the best attack in the league by some distance and have the second best defence in the league.
have pots of money to buy anyone we bleedin well like and growing our ground because weve got loads of bandwagoners rolling in by the week.....

We're and we know we are
We're and we know we are....

come on .....jump in....

If I was daft enough to buy the DVD of today's game, I'm pretty sure that I'd find that Thaler didn't get much wrong.
Sure, he missed a couple of forward passes (excuse me, but aren't touch judges actually supposed to do something, other than stick their flags up, when the ball goes into touch), but some of the South Stand's appeals for forward passes were embarrasing (I thought I'd been transported to the touchline stand at Knowsley Rd). They plainly weren't forward, but that filthy Carlsberg, must be affecting some speccies eyesight. Same again for knock ons, one of their dropped balls went 2 yards backwards (and the player was facing his own posts), and pondlife corner goes into Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

This game (especially in the second half) was a carbon copy of the Hudds game. Forced passes with 30+mins to go, when we are only trailing by two points, is suicide. Constantly giving the ball away on the 1st and 2nd tackle is, again, suicide.
Our forwards were so far off the pace today, it was laughable.
Hull destroyed us down the middle, Fitzgibbon especially
Well done Hull, by far the better side.

Oh, and last point, the treatment of Gleeson today was dreadfull. Yes, we needed to make it difficult for him, but the abuse he took, for a player who NEVER let us down, was out of order. He left us 2 years ago, and played for another club in the meantime. Contrast this to Hull,'s treatment of Carvell who left Hull for here...there wasn't a peep from them.

But Hull FC aren't small time.

Who said they were, Pie muncher????????????????? Not I

I think you miss the point...

I think Ben Thaler had a shocker. There was a certain amount of desperation from the south stand at times. I know which knock on you are talking about and as I was at half way I though it looked stone wall knock on but I quickly calmed down. Where Ben Thaler missed a lot (or maybe it is the TJ again) was the number of times Hull's line looked like a banana and the times they were blatantly offside. That was a shame today.The touch judges today were really really poor. I was embarrassed for them at times.

Agree it was a copy off the hudds game. It isn't the only time we have been in that mindset too. I don't know whether The coaching staff are focussing on it for improvement but it looks like we have developed a nasty habit. It is a kick in the teeth that we can't play free flowing rugby unless we have so much dominance. We have great forwards on paper but too many times this year they haven't turned up. I thought the Hull team (Fitzgibbon) were pulling a few Briers moments on the floor, but not the end of the world.

I think most of the south stand would agree with what you are saying about Gleeson and that is probably why there was only on good chant at him and some boos at the start of the game. I'd like to think it was good fun but maybe some took it too far. I would hope most realised he was once PnB and it is only a game at the end of the day.

We were poor all over the pitch our line speed in defence was rubbish we just stood there and allowed Hull to run at us,not to take anything away from Hull who were just the better team on the day I would prefer to get all of our rubbish displays out of the way now rather than at the end of the season !
Thaler was a joke but what ref's aren't so cant blame him ! it was another one of those flat performances which IMO can still be attributed to resting players for the Catalans game which IMO is where we lost our momentum Winning is a habit and we seem to have lost it !

I think the Wigan fan is trying to imply that our fans are small time.