But if the ball didn’t hit the player what did Jowitt get sent for?. He threw the ball half heartedly on the floor and it looked like McGowan thought it had hit his team mate and ran in looking for a fight.

Don’t suppose it matters much now though.

It does if Max gets a ban - stranger things happen.

Yellow card = matter closed, I believe??

Well the bookies are probably taking a longer view rather than focusing on one match where Bradford had a lot of players missing. They will improve on last night's performance.

And to some others, if you think Bradford are 'niggly' and try to slow the game down.. you've seen nothing yet. And you'll see alot poorer refs than Marcus Griffiths in the Championship. Cannot blame those sides, its a mostly part time league working on a fraction of the budgets Wakefield have. I'm sure it'll be a more competitive match in the return leg at Odsal.

Yeah maybe wakefield will have some players vack too

Hopefully so, I think we all want to see the best players on the pitch.

I'm not really up on the Bradford team.
Who was missing?
Are they likely to be back for the 1895?

Of the players likely to be in our 17:

Blackmore, Arundel, Baldwinson, Scurr, Doro, Johnson and Davies. I think the club still have to solve the gap left by the long term absence of Tom Holmes after his devastating health news. We have a couple of new signings from Oz waiting for clearance in Ott and Fulton which should help in the coming weeks.

No excuse having players missing ,we had that problem for years .Think we should give Wakefield credit for the way they played ,and remember there is a lot of new players getting to no each other.so as the season goes on we should get better What ever we do we always get negativity.Read a post on this forum making a big thing about there were empty seats in the East stand so they could not be a crowd of 7,200 Knock of a thousand and it is still 2,000 give and take above what we have had for years in S L .6, 200 plus was some thing the last board could only dream of

I agree, 8 games before a ball is kicked in the season is too much. Though I think there may have been a friendly or two in that.

Seems a few championship clubs have picked up some injuries.

Either that or the cup games start even earlier and have 2/3 weeks between them.

Still the same amount of games some of which are in the mud.

Bradford seemed to have a lot of friendlies as well, not sure if they were aware of the 1895 Cup format before they were agreed. Injuries are part of the game though and Bradford are more equipped than some Championship clubs to cope. However, when facing FT opposition they are naturally going to struggle playing players out of position etc. losing further players within the game just compounds that.

Bradford haven't really found their rhythm yet but I'm confident they'll improve enough to give a better account of themselves.