Jordan Rankin will get better and better when allowed to remain in the squad and not chopped and changed around as Radford tends to employ when making his selections. Have a little patience Lee, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will H.F.C. be. We know you're the coach but lots of us have been following this game before you were born -we've managed to suss out a fair bit of nous. Grannyfan Cindy

Bloody hell welcome back Grannyfan.

Never been away Smiggs, just say it as it is at the FC instead of on the boards. Still old faithful with the stress on the 'OLD' !! Grannyfan Cindy

This I agree with.

Fantastic win on Friday but Rovers were poor and we have being poor throughout the majority of the season, which probably made our performance look better then it actually was. Rovers are also a team outside the play offs, so when you put that into context it was no real mean feat.

A lot of work in pre season has to be done.

Not taking anything away from your performance as you dominated us in defence but i left happier with the score than I should because that could and should have been a 50+ drubbing. We played worse than we did against Cas and they ran in 11 tries, only Sneyds goal kicking that day stopped it being a bigger rout.

The state of both teams this year has been a crying shame for The RL supporting fans of this city.

WOW being able to turn a hammering and becoming the first kr team to be pointless in 50 years of derby games into a positive is some achievement.

Trust me there was no positives to be taken, only stating it could and should have been much much worse, which is a reflection of how bad we were and how impotent your attack was. Sad thing is we'll probably play well at the weekend, it seems a trait we all seem to recognise.

Ah get it now have a dig at us to make your self feel better and a dig at our new scrum to boot,

We are well aware our attack hasn't been great all season but we have still outscored your lot

Conditions for the 2 matches you compare were totally different. Both teams dropped plenty of ball on Friday.

Despite claims from Dobbins that there players weren't as committed as ours i certainly don't think they 'threw the towel in' like they appear to have done at Cas. Some of the Cas tries that sunny afternoon were down to really poor defensive efforts and lack of commitment. Similar to the ones Widnes got against you recently.

IF we could continue to defend like we did on Friday then i'm sure confidence in attack would increase and we would score more tries and points.

But for now we'll just enjoy a 28-NIL victory in which the opposition never really looked like scoring.

I think that's a good point. Winning breeds confidence, regardless of how those wins come about, and when you are confident the attack tends to come a bit easier.

Fwiw I don't think our attack has been terrible this year. It hasn't been good enough but on a few occasions we have scored more than enough points to win but havnt had the defence to back it up. Its the defensive capitulations that have concerned me more.

The odd thing is we're 8th best for points scored, and 5th best for points conceded.

Confidence is the key here, when you think of the amount of games we should have won or thrown away at the end, it does takes it toll in the mindset of the team.

Where as a Wigan/Wire/Cas of this term would have kicked on from 18 points up. It was only around about 65-70 minutes in the game it actually felt like the team knew they were going to win. This really was one of them games where the win was far more important then the actually performance.

It became a game of not letting Rovers back into it rather then us killing them off. I think the atmosphere helped take the team home, us as supporters have probably lacked confidence this season too and that can rub off. Its along time since we've played at the KC and players and supporters have all being off the same hymn sheet. Every black and white in that stadium wanted a victory and nobody cared how it came, think it transpired in the way we played.

Fair points and an excellent post!

We 'out KR'd KR' in the derby. When they've beaten us previously in the last few years they've always been off the line fast in defence and we've not had any plan to counteract it. Last Friday we turned the tables on them and fairly quickly dominated the game. Defence of that quality would have been good enough to compete with most of the top sides in the league and should be given huge credit. What we need to do is reach that defensive level consistently and improve our attacking structure and kicking game. Players who can only perform at that level of defensive intensity once or twice a season aren't good enough to win anything.