Batley are a good solid team, anyone who knows owt about RL can see that. They have beaten Fax 3 times now in the last year or so. We did beat 'em in't league over at The Mount last season so in that respect we are 2 points down already on last season. Saying that though there were reasons we lost there the other Sunday and we don't need to go over it all again, I just hope we have learnt something from that game. It's going to be a wet 'un again today and will probably be won by the team making the least mistakes. Here's hoping that's us. Up The Fax!

Obvious statement “Battle of the Packs” on a heavy pitch.
I’ll also add “Battle of the Halves” and their respective kicking games.
Who comes out on top between Keyes and Aston vs Smith and Craven will likely play a big part in the outcome.

FFS! Brewdog, shuddersfield. Elvis Juice 6.5%. SG anyone?

Very prophetic - in the first half particularly Smith and Craven kicked us to death - kicking from both our halves woeful. Unfortunately Widnes backed that up with some very strong running from their forwards, especially Tyler Dupree.
Second half our forwards , especially Gwaze, really improved and having got level with a bit more composure we should have gone onto win.
I've always been a big supporter of Grix but I just cannot understand having a player on the bench, especially a potential game changer, that you don't use, especially on such a physically draining day.Seen a report that Wood is out for months - if true that is a disaster!

The kicking game was excellent last week, but went missing today. Smith and Craven were the difference today. Some real brainfarts too, when we do much wrong last week.

Still think we'll be ok, but we could soon be 1 from 5...

Two evenly matched teams . Could of gone either way . Just felt that their Halfbacks kicked better. Tyler Dupree another local lad had a strong game for Widnes.
Not sure how we have ended up with Martin at fullback. Is he mates with Finn and Grixy??
Hopefully we will see Walmsley come back into side.

Was always going to be a tight game. Like last week I thought Gwaze and Fairbank gave us the impetus when they were on. We were dominating the 2nd half through basic play and completing our sets with solid defence - that's all it needed. Then 2 mistakes in sucession, a knock on from an unnecessary forced pass and a cheap offside from resulting scrum, gave them territory and momentum we didn't seem to recover from.

As for team/subs selection, I didn't get the subs with the weather. I'd have rather gambled on an extra forward in Morris.

As has been said above the difference was the kicking game and ours was awful in the first half giving them multiple 7 tackle sets. Discipline as well was poor but that has been a staple of Grix's team so not really much that can be said about that. Playing a game in a mudbath like that with just 16 players makes absolutley no sense whats so ever and Im not sure what point Grix is trying to make in doing that. Moore ran round like a headless chicken for a lot of the second half and made multiple mistakes but Joufrett is still not good enough to get on the pitch. Id love to know the plan with that as he may as well have picked Elliot Morris and had another forward on the bench that could have offered an impact. The jobs for the boys act at fullback is not working and Im not sure what we would lose by having Walmsley on the wing and Salty at FB.

Its not a disaster as I see that as a game we would have won on a decent pitch as I thought we did look better with the ball but we are now 1 from 3 with 3 tough games coming up that we will do well to win anymore than 1 from and an injury list that is stacking up to the point where like at the end of last season we look down to the bare bones especially if we are saying some of our new signings are not good enough now.

Aye, some of SG's selections/tactics are starting to look alarmingly strange. At 0v8 down and looking to be going nowhere I said if we somehow get it back to 8v8 just go for the one pointer at any possible opportunity. We didn't, Widnes did.

Aye, kicking game plaudits go to Smithy and Danny C today, we just couldn't get the range, either too short or too long and the 7 T sets as a result.
Discipline,Penalties,Position again, arrrrrrrrrrgh, must have been at least a 3 to 1 count against.
Maybe there's a connection with the injuries and us now largely back to the same pack and serial offenders from the recent past, hard to see why without watching reruns but easy to see the outcome.

Positives, good D and restricted a team who had racked up points in their last 3 to one try off a last tackle up and under that on another day could have been cleaned up.
On the rare occasion when we had some field position we looked dangerous in attack, we just didn't have enough of it to make it count.

Other news.
Games / Injuries, well we're 1 from 3 and 5 key players short with Knowles out for the season at least, Gee, Worthington and possibly Wood months away and JWH a few weeks off, 3 of our other signings not getting a start and one other going back to Siddal, not good, not good at all.