Third time lucky ????

So another year without a friendly match before the start of the season luckily we have not got Halifax away this year to start the season so even though we may not be 100% match fit we should win against newly promoted Rochdale

We have Hendo's testimonial at York before the start of the season.

On the up side we did retain the title last season with no pre season games.... every cloud and all that

Do any other sides only have just a couple of friendlies like this? York will be on at least their 3rd when they play the Eagles, I saw them at Castleford (and get hammered). Both Featherstone and Leigh have had a few as well.

To me, new to rugby league doesn't make sense not to have friendlies. That said you can have 8 friendlies pre-season in football and be more in the dark than before you started!

I think it's just us TBH but it seems to have worked in the last few years

On a personal note though I would like to see more pre season friendlies though this year wouldn't have been possible for home games as Owlerton isn't quite ready yet

But would you be saying that if a couple of key players got injured in friendlies ? Nearly all the squad have played together before - why do we need friendlies ?

Fev play more friendlies than league games, we play none. Maybe that gave us the edge last year.

Meanwhile, Halifax are talking about arranging friendlies to cover the suspensions of players getting sent off in friendlies.

To be honest we played so many games last season the lack of pre season games probably helped us although our first game last season was away to halifax we played well in poor conditions however it looked like we were lacking a bit of match fitness but i guess on the other hand the fewer friendlies you have the less the risk of your players getting injured

Wasn't so much lack of match fitness for me, duggs - more that our kicking game was tripe.

To me most of them are less useful than a decent training session - I remember us playing wakey a few seasons ago I went because I thought it would be good to see us against super league skills but most of the wakefield team were kids being given a try out. The french game would have been Tubbs doing the same with our young lads - there must be a better way - prehaps a paly ourselves - "likelies" against "hopefulls" !!! with a free gate!

I don't think we played well in that Halifax game. Absolute dog of a match IIRC.

Suddenly you've created costs. We don't own our ground.

You're right. Nothing to do with match fitness.

We looked very rusty in that game Halifax looked less rusty...... I wonder why

Fax don't have steel - maybe a bit of tin!