I think you missed the Wigan game but that was only a friendly

Rightly or wrongly, I'm still well pee'd off and think, despite the payday (after costs) it could be an own goal for the club. Getting ted by Rovers has been the defining principle of disappointment of the last 4 years at FC. After the incredible, even by FC's standards, PR hype around the "New Dawn" and talk of being miles ahead of target, to draw a crowd of 10k home fans, and essentially replay most previous encounters between the two sides is just inviting disappointment and risking alienating the floating voters IMO. Could well impact the gate for Radford's testimonial and put some off paying £23 to watch the Warrington game too.

I'll be there as usual on Sunday, but the club are drinking in the same saloon as Martin Aspinwall in the view of many fans (as Pearson has alluded too) and patience will be in very short supply this season for a fair proportion of the 8k (or whatever it is) passholders and shirt-purchasers.

Stop worrying Mrs B the fans will rally round because we our team

Anyone who thought that it would be turned around in a matter of a few weeks pre season training has probably been in one saloon too many.

Which is fine, but the club marketed the @rse out of this game as the first of the New Dawn era. "One Winner" was the strapline. Would have been better playing Saints IMO.

Of course we would I said as much in a thread last week. Derby friendlies are a waste of time. Even the marketing didn't fool me.

No one likes a smart @rse.

Well they got that one right.

Can't understand why people are questioning playing Rovers. The players and coaches got out of if exactly what was needed imo. You can train all you like and look good but its in the high pressure game situations where the your preparation is tested.
physically I thought they stood up quite well which must of been pleasing for the new conditioning team.
Defensively once again their were some good signs which I know sounds odd on the back of 36 points but I think we're not too far off.
Attack wise it is difficult to say as the 14-3 penalty count limited our time with ball in hand in attacking positions, however I think Mckinnon could pose a real threat and score a lot of tries once people read his runs down the central channel. Martin looked quite sharp and I think he'll do a good job. The halfbacks kicking again pretty poor.
mentally I honestly think we were still in Tenerife admiring how well we'd trained. Our intensity and speed were off and when rovers pressured us our decision making was poor.
Thats what I got out of it and I honestly believe this game has been good for us and the coaches/players got a hell of a lot out of it, which I don't think you would get playing any other club first hit preseason.

Good point about Mckinnon.......Sharp had the chance to put him through a hughe gap early on but just didnt read his run.....he looks a very very good full-back indeed.

Reminded me of Briscoe when he first came and I we always got a good Try return out of him.

Excellent post. You can't underestimate the fact that the penalty count meant we did a huge amount of defending which eventually told as you would expect. Considering how little we had of the ball when we had it we looked dangerous. Just need to improve the kicking game, Horne did too much and I wanted more from Seymour and Heremaia on that front.

Pen count was 5-12. Otherwise, excellent post.