We were taught a valuable lesson by one of the two best sides in the division. We are a different side from last year and still have to gel, which can only be done through game time together. Our defensive structure was very poor and our passing in attack was not crisp enough, but at least it's blown the xmas cobwebs out and shown us we have to up our game.

It will make the games against York and Batley very interesting.

Some decent performances, some bad and others indifferent.

Good by Haythornthwaite, Laughton, JD, Smith, Buster, March (until his injury), Korkidas, Sherrife.

Clough needs to be taught a lesson in how to play the game. He started just where he left-off when playing against us for Workington. If JD plays him in cometitive games then he'll lose us more games than he'll win for us. If he had played as well as he was shouting today then he'd be a worlbeater. Pity that his fist and niggling approach hasn't been tamed!

halifax team was new

Are any of the injuries serious?

Whilst Cougars were without Obst, Tadalulu, Shick, Danny Jones, Wray, Sagar, Cherryholme to name a few, I would have expected better from the team we put out.

There was a try saving moment of brilliance from Rolo.
Corky is going to be a handfull.
James H put in a good game.

Not sure after watching that if I ever want to see Clough in a Cougars shirt again.
He will cost us games by giving away penalities none stop.
Also Jonny Simpson. Is he fit enough?
Danny Lawton, normally the players who skip and kick their legs together prior to running are quick like Gav or Worrency. You are not. You need to focus on tackling. Your tackling today made Jonny Presley look good.

With Semi and Normington looking for Centre positions I would have expected Lawton to play today like it did matter.

I know we will be stonger when we play Fax again, but you can be sure they will also. They have injuries in their forwards who will return.

We really need to tighten up our tackling, far too many offloads getting out! Also Chris Clough needs to learn a bit of self control. He will lose us tight games by giving away silly penalties otherwise.
On the whole though, given that a lot of the guys who will be regular choices weren't there, I don't think today was all that indicative of how the season will pan out for either team. We know it will be hard, hopefully JD's been able to make the signings to cope. I suspect players on both sides are a bit rusty on boxing day, but once the competitive season's in full swing, I suspect we'll see a different game between the two sides...
...I hope so, for our sake!

For all the points of learning to be taken from the game today and despite the scoreline wasn't it nice to get back to watching RL. In terms of today's performance, the result as much as it hurt from our local rivals, I think performances were more important. Some postives and negatives. I agree Clough needs to learn, but this was his first game since re-joining so give JD time to work on him. If we are still saying the same points mid season then maybe it's time for him to move on, but lets not slaughter him too soon. He needs to stop flying out of the line and exposing our line though. Jones was also guilty of that and a few missed tackles. Coleman needs to work his defensive. A few times he got involved, but was also badly exposed in the second half. Korky I agree will be a handful and Brendan's outsprint of Worrincey was worth the entrance money alone. Shephard had a good solid game and could be a handful this year.

I thought James H looked solid today and took his try well. I have to say I was surprised to see Jones, Killer, Cherryholme and Shick missng. We all knew from the outset that Obst and Semi wouldn't feature but I thought he would take a stronger squad. I think it will be a different Cougars team that takes the field at York. Some good things to take away and some things to work on in training this week.

This year our mistakes will be punished and keeping silly errors and penalties down to a minimum is crucial.

James Haythornthwaite was our best player today, I hope he can keep fit as he has a bright future, took his try well and made a brilliant try saving tackle.

After Paul March went off we seemed to lose direction and it went downhill from there. Some of the tries were scored were too easy.

Then after losing both wingers the wheels fell off. They shipped the ball wide at will and we just didn't slide our defence across.

Agree Haythornthwaite was outstanding. Reality kicked in though. xx

Gav Duffy was up-to his usual best also, until he got a knock.

One thing that I couldn't understand was why we reverted to the 'Barry Eaton Restart' philosophy - [i'kick the ball into the opponents left hand corner but don't chase it or, if you do, lumber up'[/i. We never changed it during the entire game!

There were numerous ocasions when a short kick and a predetermind sprint would have done the trick and a fast, low touch-finder would have paid dividends today.

I can only hope for a greater variation come the start of the season!

Unless Coleman has a strange body-shape then it still looks as though he's carrying some excess weight but JD really does need to sort Clough. As I said earlier, he's still a liability and did nothing but shout today, that is apart from giving away penalties. 'Waste of space' springs to mind and I hope that we're not paying him on today's performance.

Also, was it just me or did the fact that we played in last season's shirts with incorrect names on the back look a tad unprofessional?

Not too worried about that Dominance. If the old shirts are still available then why not use them up in pre-season friendlies instead of spending more money on the new kit.

Can't remember but did the Halifax shirts have their players names on them? Some didn't even have numbers.

As I've already said, my main concern was and is Clough. JD certainly looks to have his work cut-out with him!

I think Halifax played with 20 players, 3 of which had no numbers.

This coming season there are no squad numbers in the Championship. So you will see good old fashioned 1-17 on the shirts with no names on the back.

2 with no numbers were Josh Barlow and Jesse jo sheriffe, both from under 23s last year and seeing how they went, not sure the other one.

The thing that concerned me most is that we played the same slow play it up the middle style that we did for most of last season. When we last got promoted you could see, even from the early season games that we had improved significantly in fitness and pace. That was definately not the case yesterday. All the top teams , Halifax, Featherstone, Sheffield and batley play a free-flowing , ship it out wide as much as possible style. This is the opposite to how we play, and I fear that if we stick to how we played last year we could find ourselves outclassed and definately out-paced. Most teams take a while to adapt to the pace of the Championship and I fear we are starting from a slower start.