Quote: jack in the box "Glad you have mentioned this because I am a cynic. All you have to do is get heavily penalised for the first 15 minutes and the best teams in SL would find it difficult to get back into the game. The refs can even things up later but its too late the tone has been set and its all over.
I can understand head high shots, crossing, offside etc. But many of those last night that we got at the play the ball were killers. What we did was no different to what Bradford were doing but for some reason we seemed to get penalised. Further to that the penalty always seemed to happen on the 4th or 5th tackle.
Salfords first try last week came on the back of around 20 consecutive PTB's. Bradfords first try last night was just the same. Hard not to be suspicious.'"
Watching the game on TV it was clear that Wakefield were losing the collisions and were consistently being pinged for changing moving to cover the ball up after the held call. Hicks did penalise that more than you normally see, but he was clear in telling the players what he was penalising, in those circumstances you have to question the players.
As to the game itself Bradford clearly won the physical battle, that could be a worry for you or might simply be that they had a couple of fresh bodies and you did not after the short turn round from Sunday. My biggest criticism of your team is the hooker, McShane flaters to decieve, his distribution is poor and frankly he can hardly pass left to right at all. I lost count of the number of times he had to change hands passing that way. I think the worry would be that Collis and Kirmond may not get any good ball in attacking areas. McShanes threat around the ruck and good short kicking game are good, but I don't think the price of being unable to move the ball right is worth that.