Quote: upthecats "Wonderful afternoon!
There's such a fine line between success and failure in sport isn't there...... 50 minutes in and we were the same old Wakey.....Agar was picking up his p45 and Tim Smith was joining all the rest of the useless Aussies of times past back on the plane home.
What then happened was unreal, a spark from somewhere and having looked dead and buried we began to believe in our selves all of a sudden it was game on. Lets be honest, the first 50 minutes was easily forgettable (barring Fox's superb try) as we were woeful and Hull never needed to get out of 2nd gear to move into a comfortable lead.
Think Steve Southern deserves a bit of credit....he's had his knockers but I thought he did excellent today when he came on, he gave us great go forward and quick play-the balls....the huge difference though was Kyle Wood to half back......it released a bit of pressure off Smith and Sykes who both played far better when Wood was on....we shifted the ball around better instead of the one out stuff we had done before.....and Paul Aiton was nothing short of sensational when used as a running forward on the fringes.....he took the ball in time after time in bruising fashion and for me would have just edged the excellent Sykes for m.o.m....
The last half hour was as enjoyable as I've seen for quite a while and I thought in the end we ran out very worthy winners. Lets hope we can build further on this and go and give Leeds a real game next week......'"
Although I understand your point and agree in spirit I didn't quite see the game like that.
I thought we were playing well, especially in defense all the way through the game. They rarely broke our line. They only got their tries with out of the blue mistakes. We handed them field position over and over and to be honest they still wouldn't hvae broken the line if we hadn't followed one error with another.
Even though we were outgunned in size in the forwards we made ground because of our back three running the ball out and giving the guys a rest. They hardly crossed our half way until we walked them gently over it.
I thought their half backs were weak in defense and Smith spotted that and told players where to run. He and Sykes by contrast made some key tackles. I thought we handled Manu well on the whole, though they handled Ali most of the time too.
Thought our half backs and wingers made the difference today.
