I find it curious that the seemingly mild mannered Kear ALWAYS produces team like this.

From what I've heard of Kear he really fires them up behind closed doors

That away game at Dewsbury in 2017 when Keyes had his jaw broken and Thomas was chucked into the barriers is still an uncomfortable memory. We had a team of kids and loanees and we got badly beaten up that day. The ref didn’t want to know and we seemed unable to fight our own corner. It happened a few times that year. I have a feeling a lot of our lads have grown up since then and it won’t happen again.

Watching the full game back there was plenty of poop house tactics going on from Batley. Its good that the team have the agression to stick up for themselves but not take it overboard like other teams seem to do.

Out of curiosity, how does retrospective action happen? Does it have to be put on report?

There was a blatant headbutt from Manning on Flanagan (skip to 58:45 on the full game video) and its plane as day. George just laughs it off.

Flanagan has had a two game ban for dangerous contact reduced to one - so he misses the Toronto friendly. I only heard about this via the Bulls website. The official disciplinary page on the RFL website isn't up to date (like much of their content). No idea if any Batley players were up for suspension.

On Flanagan he did a great job of putting a few Batley players off their game and getting into their heads. Brown, Manning and Dickinson were all intent on doing some damage to him on occasion. George is certainly no angel either I hasten to add.

I think this ban is from the game the week before,so I expect Sunday's game will be dealt with next week.

Cheers.

Shame the RFL site can't keep up.

The nice thing is that - unlike previous seasons - having a player banned makes very little difference. If George gets a ban, we just go with Wildie and put Hallas on the bench for the hooker interchange.

What a difference to some of our recent situations!

Or go with Keyes and Chisholm in the halves, with Lilley as the interchange 9. Yes, the options when missing players certainly seems better with the current squad, all across the board really.

That competition for places should mean better performances all round. In the recent past some players got in the side simply because there was nobody else and was nothing to do with how well anyone played.