Firstly congrats to Hull. You will have my support come the day.

During this season we have had a make do centre in Grix perform well every game he plays and two highly rated recognised centres playing poorly at times. Yesterday's game coincided with another poor game from a recognised centre and the team as a whole being rather flat. Hill, Wood and Higham found it very difficult to get on top as did Morley, Carvell and Monas. Briers was not his usual class act. The position now, is that the team and Smith have no excuses as why they don't give the Superleague title a real go and prove that this group of players is worthy of a title winning ring. Next year we need an improvement in the playing staff at centre.

Precisely.

We are the current holders, and have won the competition 3 times in the last 5 years. I very much doubt we went into that game yesterday thinking it doesn't matter if we don't get to the final, Super League is more important.

I'm sure Tony Smith knows that each and every game is important, regardless of whether or not it's for a place in a cup final, or for 2 league points.

thats exactly what i thoght on the way back to the car.

It was an astonishingly bad display from Bridge.. his performance started badly and went downhill... he coughed up possession how many times... 4/5/6? i lost count.

he couldn't have been any worse if he had tried....mindless penalty's, knock ons and THAT kick.

at 8-0 up we were dominant.... bridge then gave them 6 points and the game totally changed.

Briers was aimless all game...maybe we should have offered him a new contract after the semi-final. Look at what happened on the 78 minute mark, free play from the Hull knock-on Briers went inside instead of getting to the outside shoulder of the last Hull defender with Joel having a one on one ten metres out...he would have scored.

All our backs had poor games (maybe excepting Joel but he wasn't faultless).

I thought our pack did well on the whole.

I thought Grix was the best of them and Ninj wasn't bad - that break at the end to set up our last try was great, the only pity being he didn't have the gas to go the whole way himself.

i didn't i thought we struggled to make distance and get on top, forwards were ineffective, westwood went back to early season form and chilly looked shagged for most of the second half

They didn't have much trouble in gaining field position for the most part and aside from the middle section of the game they won the collision and dominated at the PTB. Carvell and Cooper were the pick of the forwards.

Riley made an absolute HOWLER with his defensive read for the Whiting try. It is no coincidence that Hull concentrated most of their attack on our left edge. Then again most teams do.

my reply to the original post of we wanted it more was firmly tongue in cheek

Lefty. Both you and I were expecting that from Padders. Bridge had a very poor game and I'm sure he knows it. You're right, he is a quality player and will certainly bounce back. I see there was no mention from paddrers about the Mom performance last week.

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This is the only reasonable explanation for that kick.

I was under the impression that the free play only applied to the team who hadnt commited the original knock-on. The ref would have blown straight away as it was another warrington hand that now had the ball and Hull had no advantage. I think he just saw an opportunity to get the ball wide to a 2 on 1 situation without having to pass through hands. I have to say that looking at the replay, your two guys on the wing looked just as culpable. They didnt change their path to get closer to the ball, they just kept running straight. When Lineham takes it, there isnt a player within 5 metres of him.

Yes, that's my interpretation of the freeplay rule too. Perhaps Bridge mistakedly thought Hodgson had the ball knocked out of his hand by the defender. I don't think I've seen Bridge do flat cross-field kick before, so it was weird. Especially as Lineham did virtually the same type of intercept earlier in the season, think it was v leeds.

I'm glad somebody else has highlighted the roles of Riley and Grix on that play.
They seemed to completely mis-read where that ball was heading for.
My only explanation is that they thought each other was going to attack the ball and both went into support mode.

Perhaps I'm more annoyed at them than I am at Bridge because of what also happened just four minutes later.

The 'free play' idea is interesting and when I saw him put the kick in initially I thought it must be a free play. Perhaps he thought so.
I've always liked Bridge as a player so maybe he's just a bit rusty. I was cursing him during the game but I've cooled off. There were certainly other players who were not at their best and didn't do as much as might be expected.
I thought Ratchford tried hard all game and was the one who nearly stopped the breakaway try. I'd always imagined that Riley was one of our quickest but he was easily chased down when he got an interception. Do we have a very speedy player? Do we need one?