Oh dear, bubble burst!!!

So, the trophy-less clock ticks on remorselessly, getting ever closer to the FORTY year point!!

Or, to put it another way, there has now been 128 'major' top-level RL competitions played since April 1985, all 128 of which have passed our nearest and dearest by! That is a long time between drinks, even the likes of Leigh, Sheffield, Castleford and our good selves have had the occasional sup since rovers last taste!

Wigan simply suffocated, bullied and dominated rovers, made absolutely sure right from the start that there would be no repeat of the league game from a few weeks back. Way too strong for rovers in every department.

Rovers are going to have to pick themselves up off the floor and quick. They have two shots left or the clock really will tick past the forty year mark next April.

Was all Kendalls fault apparently.

That wigan didn't hit 50?

How do you calculate 128? Purely academic question… i’m curious whether you counted the LLS for example?

Perfect storm, Rovers could win a trophy. Like Leigh (and very nearly Rovers, in fact - but no cigar) last year. But it remains unlikely.

How many of those 128 trophies were won by Wigan, I wonder? And how many is optimal to maximise joy through a fan lifetime without getting desensitised? Like if you’re a Celtic fan, how to you celebrate a 12th league title in 13 years? A slightly bigger blob of ketchup than normal on your chips?

I’ll probably not see Rovers win a major trophy in my adult life. 1925 to 1979 was a long wait, so it is not like my generation of robins is uniquely afflicted. And there’s footage from the more recent golden era in times of need. This is probably as good as it gets, so might as well make the best of it for as long as it lasts. In amongst the subplots and oddities. I suspect there’s more fun here, in some ways, than as a fan of the dully impressive silverware production line clubs. There, I’ve cheered myself up, even if I have had to rely on adapting fugly person’s ‘good looking people don’t develop personalities’ argument.

Absolutely!!! If Kendall gives that 50/50 call for the 'block' on Tyrone May, then rovers would have gone on to win by thirty!! No, honest they would, really!!!!

Rovers obviously had no chance to recover from such an injustice like that 50/50 call going against them, what other team on Earth could ever recover from such a setback? I honestly thought Jon Wilkin was going to burst into tears when discussing it at half-time

Ah well, at least I can now sit at Wembley in peace and watch the game as a relaxed neutral

There will be a few unhappy posters on here but personally I’m buzzing.
Kr unstoppable at losing big cup games.

I'll admit I was someone who thought rovers would go one (final) step further than they did in 2023, but they were simply blown away by a far superior side this afternoon, rovers not even at the races, never seriously in contention from the start

That is their best chance of ending the trophy drought gone in an instant. Unless they finish in the top two their chances of making Old Trafford will diminish greatly. They need to address their away days blues and quick or they will end up empty handed yet again for the umpteenth year (and counting!!).

Hey Suns out .... Rovers out

Rovers get the majority of calls when they play at home, for whatever reason. It's been seen the last couple of weeks that without them getting constant penalties or set restarts they actually struggle to make decent metres, and neither Lewis or certainly May have a good enough kicking game to get them out of trouble and turn the tide.
The media have given them far too much hype and their fans, and to a degree probably their players, have been sucked in by it.

I only saw the last 20 mins or so but really surprised by the scoreline as was convinced Rovers would win the trophy this year. Now of course to "go one better" than last year they need to win the Grand Final, odds are 10/1 so idk.

I feel sorry for the rovers fans under 50 who either weren't alive whe they last won anything or were too young to really remember it.

Get their grandparents to dust off the betamax.

A long time between drinks for sure.

There have been seven Presidents of the United States and nine UK Prime Ministers since Rovers last won a major trophy (although to be fair there's been four PMs since we last won one).

Good idea although you'd obviously have those black strips down the sides, assuming they still work

To be fair they were still right in it...........for the first 10 minutes.