As Douglas Adams said. There's a lot of emotive reactions to tonight's game, but I'd just like to give my balanced view. I don't think it fits into any of the existing threads so nerr.

Ref: bloody awful. I thought they were trained that if the ball pops out of the completed tackle it's probably reefed. Not tonight. I was watching the pitch markings and he was retreating 12 not 10. Gave us nothing. Nothing. Amos's try looked perfectly good to me and I was looking down on it. We got nothing tonight. Nothing.

Us: I thought we were mostly good. Muscled well - Hudds' pack is huge and we sized up, made yards, drove them back, hit hard and showed the passion we've been after. Unfortunately we harked back to 2005/6 with suicidal penalties at times, can we not cut these out? Handling errors can be partly forgiven, it was very greasy tonight, but still frustrating. Our defence was solid, even when when some tackles were missed others scrambled well. They made how many breaks?
Going forward I thought we ran good angles, good dummy runners, overall we ran well and showed good hands. Hate to say it but Tomkins cost us two tries tonight - both 3-man overlaps on the right and he went himself. He's a talent but he has plenty to learn.

Hudds: Superb defence. We ran well but Hudds' defence was awesome. No gaps at all. They covered our every option which is why Sam's mistakes when we finally worked a couple of overlaps has cost us. Let's not pretend they're an automatic 2 points any more, this is a good strong side who will turn plenty over.

Overall, bitterly disappointed. The ref caned us but we couldn't turn possession into points - but credit to Hudds' defence for that. Good to see some passion as well.

Quality post

There's been a bit of an over-reaction about how poor we were tonight. I honestly thought with 7-8 minutes left we were going to win the game. We got s***housed by Bentham, I'm glad someone else noticed him retreating us more than 10!!

Absolutley nothing i disagree with there. All this season we've seen them lose and deservedly so, but for me the ref(and his two side kicks) were awful tonight and in my opinion didn't just cost us a possible win, but also a better game to watch.

Seems to me when confronted with the negative tactics from the opposition we had no plan B. Well there is a surprise.

No use blaming the ref as once the oppositions tactics become obvious different tactics from us should have been employed.

Were they?

Dave

Erm, what?

Huddersfield did what they always do - a big, rough team who will always try and batter the opposition. Are you trying to say we didn't know that? I'd say the way we tore into them at times says otherwise. Our forwards made yards, battled well and took it to them, just as they took it to us.

And yes I'd say we changed tactics - we threw it wide a lot more, we had dummy runners all over the place as the ball went to the centres and as I've already said, we created at least 2 3-man overlaps that Sam wasted. Our only try was from this move, as was Roberts' disallowed try. So yes, we tried to go wide and unfortunately Hudds' defence was just too good - let's not ignore that.

You must have watched a different game to me then. We've got forwards who dont run the ball in at the line they jog sidewys with it - with the exception of Feka. Our play the ball/getting the ball out from dummy half is so slow compared to the top sides. And when we do get the ball out far too many passes are either above the head or round the ankles.
Add all these together and you get performances that see us beat by wakefield, castleford and huddesrfield etc.
Who is to blame the players or the coaching staff. That is for others to decide. But what I do know is if we keep playing like yesterday we will be lucky to make the 8, which will be disastrous and if that happens there needs to be a complete overhaul of staff at the club.

That's one of the things that was very frustrating - every player should have been going in to the tackle thinking "They're going to try to reef it / pop the ball out" - I could see it, the crowd could see it, why couldn't our players?

I also felt that we never really tried for the quick play the ball - we were quite happy to let them sprawl all over us and mess us around. One way you can counter that is by forcing yourself up and playing the ball - we were content with moaning to the referee (who was clearly not going to do a thing) and playing into Huddersfield's hands.

I think one thing you cannot highlight from that performance is the forwards.

With the exceptions of Bailey and feka.

Agreed on this form we will be out of the CCup next week.

any grapple tackles or owt last night?