Close to the ground there is one pub - Duke of Kent, Scotch Common, Fullers pub with a large beer garden. If you are really lucky the Pimms Bar will be open. A little further away on Pitshanger Lane is the Village Inn. Both are good pubs. And as said there are a lot of establishments at Ealing Broadway.

Karetaker, look on the positive side at least it's on Saturday so the m6 will be less of the moving traffic jam than it is on a fri or Sunday. You are only having t do it one weekend though buddy.
As being bosty says for us we have the problem every away game!!!! Go on have an adventure, come down to west london, it's always better than telly.

Not surprised that junior is dropped

I see that we have the same referee as for the Featherstone game. What have we done to deserve him.

This should be a game made for him, up against big rough, forwards, sadly not.

You wouldn't think he will be with us next year

What really irritated me in the Fev game was the attitude of our players to the ref from the get go, even when we were on top. They were in his face all the time. When he gave a decision against us our players should have transitioned into defence not stood around him like footballers yapping away. It demonstrated to me a lack of composure in what was a relatively big game.

Well said WQ. How players react to a decision, can effect the way they are dealt with at the next incident. If players are constantly in the refs face aka football style the next next 50/50 is only going one way, if players accept the decisions right or wrong funny thing the next 50/50 goes your way.
Don't blame the ref, blame the players, ref is never offside, ref never last on too long in the tackle.

That's a pretty experienced team out for the game, the two touchies are very experienced

There's more to it than that. Your mind is in a negative state when it should be positive and thinking about dominating the defence.(which is coming whether you like it or not). Ive thought for some time the team lacks composure(the missed drop kick opportunity v Fev being an example). Maybe we need a couple of older heads to control the teams emotions.

We all know I am a ref, pre kick off chat to the players, I always tell em that I have never yet changed a decision because a player has seen it different. As a ref the best thing a player does when you give a decision against them is for them to say "ok sir" turn round and get in the defensive line, that player in the next 50/50 call is more likely to get the call there way. If a player questions everything, 1 he gets penalised, 2 any 50/50 is just going against em.
It's the same chat to kids and adults.
It's quite funny when you have binned a player for constant gob, when they come back on keep quiet and just get on with the game there performance improves massively.
Players especially pro players need to concentrate on playing there game, whinging at the officials just detracts from the rugby

Normally I'd be happy at the moment with a close loss to the wire, but lets be honest, we are not going up owing to our own stupidity....

1) Not kicking the Pen at Cats :- cost us a point
2) we had ample chances to kick a drop goal towards the end of the match vs Feb :- there is another point dropped
3) Sammut not finding touch with the pen with <3 mins left of first half and we up 14-6 with wire on the rack, instead we go in 14-10 they have all the momentum, and as you know momentum is everything in this Game...

So we have a talented team who are skillful enough to go up, but are not Intellegent enough to go-up so we will finish 6th at best this year, and lets guess rinse and repeat next year, get into the top 4 again and then blow it with stupidity....

I personally am not sure after this if I want to be stuck in this groundhog day next year. We should have gone up this year, and its our own stupidity which has cost us, not the performance of the other teams

The difference between the 2 teams tonight was speed of the ptb, wire invariably were on knees and elbows in the tackle we were turned on our backs! Result of that was a 9 5 penalty count against us.
50/50 call went against us with the missed touch at the penalty that easily could have been called as in touch when patted back, 50/50 call went for us with the Dixon late try that could have been chalked off for a double knock on.
Reality us it's not one decision or kick that costs the game it's the whole 80 mins and every decision, tonight had Dixon caught that ball for the first wire try rather than mis time his jump, who knows.
Apart from the result, I loved that game.

It was exciting thats for sure. We scored some scintillating tries. The first 30 minutes was pretty much perfect rugby from us.
Again though we let the opposition have a prolonged spell of dominance and in this case first 20 of the second half Wire ran in a number of tries and it was catch up rugby from there.

Crashmon you summed it up very well, its so near but so far but something we had control over so we can't blame anyone else.

Still 3 games to go all winnable.

WQ you know it's one of those really annoying things, if we play like we did for spells last night we should tear Halifax apart, Widnes and Leigh are both games we could win, I think we will possibly win 2 out if those 3 and just fall short again.
As for crashmon, hey it's sport fella it's how it goes, walking away is just denying yrself the best sport in the world

I think last night summaries the whole season, brilliant spells of exciting rugby mixed in with spells of under performance/lack of concentration.

Its been a roller coaster ride thats for sure, certainly puts you though a variety of emotions.

I think realistically we will be in an exciting championship next year with Toronto joining, Toulouse hopefully learning from their back end down turn, HKR/Widnes/leigh/Catalans being favourites, Fax and Fev in the mix, its a pity the Bulls wont be there. Let's hope Hendo and co take a hard look at the season and make the necessary changes.

Areas for me;

Defence being tighter
Play for 80 mins
A couple of higher grade props
A strike centre
An old campaigner to manage the team on the field.

My thoughts on our strengths

Some great halves and hookers
Good back row
Very good in attack(although I'm not sure we go wide enough at times with ball in hand and use our wingers)
Very fit
Im sure there are many more