Altogether I though Our Performance Was Poor.. Yes Maybe Tired As Its Our First Match But I Expected A Little Better.. There Was talk of us being way ahead of schedule and we were playing good attacking rugby in training.. Where was that on the pitch??

We did kick better when we could, but once again the right hand side were attacked all the time, and sometimes they were no where to be seen. it did strengthen when martin came on though.

I think o carroll had a great game, at first thought i thought he was small to be a prop but he proved me wrong and i think he could turn out to be a great addition.

lastly, next time we play rovers. please just let sam moa sit on chris welham while reece lyne t-bags him..

How did the back row play? Did Whiting and Green come on there?

It's not his team!

He's taken a lot of positives out of the game!

Sorry, I'm on auto pilot after four years.

I never like losing to Rovers, however it was only a friendly and we are still above them in the league on alphabetical order. The table doesn't lie!

Horne won't be dropped. Gentle has just made him VC. Not so sure that was a wise move as he's effectively tied his own hands certainly for the first few rounds.

Manu and Tickle were ok, would still like to see the Manu hit the ball at pace like Tickle, stood still too often. Made some breaks though. Tickle bust the line a few times too.

Whiting, Aspinwall, Green and Kent played but never really noticed them. Green dropped it first hit up but then settled down and did well for his try.

HORNEY HORNEY HORNEY!

Love it! Had numerous half back partners over the past couple of years, dealt with serious illness, admittedly not got the spark he once had, but to knock him and ask for him to be dropped after a friendly, with ANOTHER new half back, is laughable!

Cheers Paul, How did Westerman play?

Very poor, hardly saw him tbh.

Biggest difference between the sides was the hookers surprisingly. They got out quick and brought on their forwards on short, sharp balls either side on the ptb. It got them cheap yards. It was a tactic which worked, I expected to see Heremaia getting out and engaging the defenders before passing but he mainly just passed although did defend well. Houghton did his usual. That combo along with Horne and Seymour clearly needs more work. We still need to move the ball quicker and convert our breaks into tries. We could should have been 18-0 up in 10 mins.

A work in progress i'd say, it's gonna take time.

Might as well get the trophy cabinet ready for Rovers again.

I still think Horne should have been developed as a fullback. His skills are, good runner with ball in hand, good stepper & decent defence.
A half back needs to be an expert, kicker, passer, runner & organiser.
The fact Rich struggles in a couple of these areas means more pressure lies on the shoulders of his half back partner.
How many times do you think Craig Hall has practiced at 6 in pre season for rovers before Green became injured?
Yet he & Dobson shared the responsibility & ran the game easily.
I don't think people are knocking Horne, but he's had 10 years in that position & there has always been debate as to wether that's his best position.

Been hearing so much once again about how far ahead you are of where you should be in pre-season, how the players have been training the house down but Gentle said the team was treating this game as a SL fixture. Im not surprised alot of you are dissapointed and left early, by the sounds of it the scoreline flattered FC a little.

On the other hand and what people need to realise is that was your first hit out, loads of new players to gel, nowhere near upto match fitness yet and a new coach who will have brought in a whole new game plan/structure for the team to get used to. All this doesnt happen overnight.

As for Rovers, apart from the injuries we have had what seems to be a positive pre-season, nice break now for the team and can go into the Leeds game been quietly confident.

You'll notice I haven't argued against that at all.

As I've been saying all through the closed season, I'm confident that Gentle will deal with the situation appropriately. We finally have some options at HB and if Horne doesn't measure up then either Ellis or Niklas will get their chance. From what I've heard and read Niklas seems to have had the better start so far so maybe he'd be a better option ATM than Ellis?

I'm reasonably confident that this will have been looked at in training. ATM Gentle clearly thinks that Horne is the best option, but if that isn't how it pans out then I doubt he'll stick with Horne just for the sake of it.

Score flattered us how? We should have scored 3 tries before you were even in our half with the ball? Rovers have better strength in depth that's for certain, this is as a result of Agar not playing youngsters.