O/T

Leigh 68 Sheffield 6

London 16 York 16 ... cracking effort by the Skolars.

I have to say a much improved performance on last week, but ultimately it was our mistakes (and some over zealous penalties for not playing the ball), that cost us in the end.

Interesting too it tool 77 minutes before Jamie Bovill made break.

My first competitive of the season, and I enjoyed it.
I agree we contributed to our downfall with the soft penalties we conceeded, but i think the injuries we suffered before and during the match we a bigger factor in the match. Fawcett, Crawley, Leaf and Butterfield to name four.
This meant Sanderson played the whole game at scrum half,
The biggest distruption for me was the injury to Leaf, which meant Emitt, Carbutt and Ely all had to have a spell at centre, which ulitmately cost us 2 soft tries down our right side

Plenty of decent performances from Dons players - Scott had a good game offloading well, China (apart from those 2 mistakes), the pack worked really hard, And Williams did well when he came on in the main.

Londons result today shows the result last week wasnt that bad.

If the injuries clear up, we look like going it the proper season in decent shape.

The Fawcett injury is the most worrying, speaking to his dad after the game, he didn't really seem to know how long he is likely to be out for.

Think we need to hit the loan market for half back then

Well, either that, or a hooker...

A torn quad is normally pretty nasty.

How did he do that, in the warm up? he was named in the 17 orginally wasnt he?

Regarding the team wilson started on the wing & williams was on the bench.

What about the disllowed try , ref said their player grounded the ball , clearly a knock on & we went on to touch down .Thought we came back into the game well after the disruption of injuries to Leaf & butterfield .

SKY Sports had it the other way round. Couldn't work out from their line-up who was supposed to be playing where either.

Hence my comments earlier in the thread.

Overall an encouraging game. A few mistakes and cheap penalties, 2 of which led to rams tries and 2 when we were in their 20. I didn't realise in the game that we had picked up that many injuries. Hopefully butterfield will be ok as he was having another solid game. I thought the ref was being a bit picky and as for the knock on over the line where Williams touched down that proved to be a game changer. At 24 all we could have gone on and won. Anyway, came away reasonably pleased, well done lads, coyd.

Thought we came out of the blocks today quickly and impressively...

Could easily have been 18 - nil up within 15 mins...

The ref in the first half was as good as we have had but 2nd half he just killed the game in places - I will be amazed if we see one further penalty for play the ball in the remaining season ....

That said injuries didn't help...

Some daft penalties, we must learn that laying on, reefing and pulling feet when standing up will always be penalised...

I also need to applaud Butterfield who I was critical of pre-season, but is turning into a real asset...

Overall a far better game than last week and in theory against much stiffer comp....Dewsbury will have to step up a level in that league....

A good day out COYD

It's a debating point ... on the one hand let's say what a prick the ref was with his 'you didn't play the ball right' ... 'you lifted his leg' .. pretty much trivial e that most refs would have allowed. And at the time, being angry that's how I felt.
On the other hand ... let's say the ref was right in his picky decisions and the Dons were to blame.
Right, let's give the ref the benefit of the doubt, since as far as I'm concerned he doesn't give a sh*t who wins .. he's neutral.

Now given the latter is most probably the case ... I would urge Miller to address three things at his next training session.
Tell his players to:-
One ... stop fiddling about in the tackle.
Two ... put your foot on the ball as you play it.
Three ... watch a video of Brambani's kicking game.

If that training session had come prior to this game ... I am pretty sure the Dons would have won.

Williams scored a perfectly good try and Leatherbarrow should have electric prods attached to his bolloxs until he admits he was just guessing ... which he was!

Let's move on ... (we lost a game would could and perhaps should have won) ... If we get our injured lads back coupled with Dobek and Edwards, then surely we will take some beating in our division.

Forget tales of woe against Thatto ... we will marmalise Thatto, we are just too good. The side that lost against Siddal was dreadful, that's history and irrelevant.

We need to compete against Rochdale next week irrespective of whether it's a dead rubber or not ... because if we can go there and run them close or beat them, we will know we are in with a shout in this league.
COYD

Yep. Some of the angles he was hitting the line at were excellent, he isn't the quickest fullback in the division, but he is a very elusive runner, and will get tries that way.

An encouraging performance for me, but for a few key moments we could of snatched it. Was a shame that after some periods of excellent line defence we then let them through for a couple of soft tries but on the whole we looked solid under some periods of pressure.

Chris Spurr had a blinding first half for me

I went to the game expecting a substantial gulf between the two sides, and left feeling disappointed that we did not get more out of it.
Some daft penalties given away and the odd dodgy refs call made a lot of difference, but i think we can hold our heads high and look forward to the league season.
Another good effort from everyone concerned.
When you look back at where we were at this time last year it makes you think.