Quote: mickyb1234 "My honest opinion on the game as a whole! Bradford played to there strengths, the ptb was much quicker and they dominated us in the ruck.
We lost direction on the park soon as Hendo came off..its hard to win a game without the ball, we gave it away 14 times and probably conceded 30 mtrs on every one of those 14 occasions.
It was the same last year, we never learnt to play the ref, commit an offence like holding down once can be seen as testing the ref, twice ok laziness 3-4-5 just plain stupid.
as soon as we learn that quick ptb gets results we will start improving, tackle technique to control the ruck in defence earns you the right to have that little extra time to set your defence.
And don't bloody argue decisions even if you think it's wrong, ref is never gonna change his mind because you are in his face, aka 40/20 suck it up and get on with it.'"
Couldn't disagree more with this post. God knows we're a long way from the finished article and Bradford are clearly, on their day, a better team than us. But this really wasn't their day - even after they'd been given countless ball on the bad of some decidedly dodgy refereeing decisions. When the penalties started coming they started scoring - often after we'd successfully held them out for more than one set. Given that the decisions came after such bad (let's call them bad, other words do spring to mind) calls I'm not sure what you're expecting from our team. Eventually, a side as good as Bradford are going to get through your defence. I therefore don't blame the players for conceding, even the softer tries, on the bad of bad refereeing calls. Yes, yes, you need to get on with it and try and keep them out if you can, but I think it's poor form to highlight our deficiencies on those occasions, and not acknowledge a far bigger factor of the lame-brain decision that immediately preceded it.
I actually thought we did well to stay in the game as long as we did, to not collapse immediately before half time also when I can't remember us having the ball at all! I was hopeful that the second half refereeing couldn't be as bad so we had a chance. But actually it was worse and THAT more than any other factor in the game is why we didn't give them a closer game. There are plenty of times where it's easy to hide behind the refereeing decisions as hiding a bad performance. For once this really isn't one of those times!! Wise up people, we did ok in the circumstances. It's only a game of course, but we don't have to look inward on this one. We were done, it wasn't right but I'm also not suggesting some malevolent conspiracy either. Hopefully it won't happen again, but if we have to apportion blame let's at least get it right this time.
