Quote Suzie="Suzie"Genuine question?
Do you really believe that you played that well today? I've just listened to Morgan on the way home and he's saying he believes it's the best you've played all season. We all have opinions and look at games differently but I thought the game showed that both teams are poor and deserve to be were there are in the table. From an Hull point of view we were terrible, we had so much ball in that 1st half and was absolutely clueless in attack.
I believed we'd win today because I thought our forwards would be too strong for you but I admire the way you play for each other and hang in there and I think you deserved to win. I thought both ur half backs played well and Wheeldon had a very good game constantly taking the ball forward.'"
Fair question, but the key element you're not taking into account is [uintensity[/u. The higher intensity then the lower scoring the game in most cases.
Yes, the first game of the season Rovers scored tries against FC like shelling peas but the game wasn't high intensity as such like today. Likewise due to Bentham's disgraceful "refereeing" on Good Friday which resulted in us being on the end of a ridiculous 5-1 penalty count by half time so a stop/start affair in which we didn't see much of the ball meant for a game with less intensity.
Today we had only one penalty in the first half and more trading of sets even though Rovers made more errors. And the reason FC looked clueless in attack was due to Rovers defensive [uintensity[/u - similar to the play-off game last season when FC's only points came from a Briscoe try (which wasn't actually a try because he was in touch).
I suppose what I'm saying is that Rovers can simply defend to level of intensity that FC can simply not do anything about - even when you are at full-strength with the exception of Phelps and part of this is down to the fact that FC's players are no where near as good as most of FC's fans think they are which is why FC won't finish in the play-offs this year.
Rovers scoring only three tries isn't exactly worth bragging about but when you consider we had Fox, Webster, Clinton and Watts all on the sidelines, not to mention the salary cap space used for Mason, then it's fair and reasonable to say that a full-strength Rovers side against a full-strength Rovers side with an equal penalty count would probably result in a 20+ points difference in the favour of Rovers every time.
Rovers defended really well today and I really feel that Morgan's squad rotation policy this season is just starting to bear fruit because the players look in nick.
