Best SH in the comp by a distance.

No mention of Orford being a O.A.P. i see.

Think you'll find Reardon played last night.

Both packs were pretty evenly matched, but Rovers were boshed at half back.

he got carried off didn't he, looked pretty bad.

Is anybody able to allay my fears?

I haven't made it to any of the games and thanks to a monumental over sight I'll be in London next week, but from what I've heard on the radio and read we seem to be going in a bit under cooked.

Losing to a Bradford team that haven't really played together is not a good sign.

We also seem to be giving away a huge amount of penalties, one of the best aspects of our game over the last three seasons has been reasonably good discipline, we need to get this back.

Hopefully I'm interpreting things incorrectly?

I know he was playing but not the full game? I meant when (or if) he's available for a full game. You'd have to be pleased to match Bradford's pack though in poor conditions.

Got injured in the second half.

Rovers pack was solid enough and i'd be reasonable happy with the way they played, particularly when you consider they were without Ben Galea for 78 minutes

I've only seen/heard the same as you, so I don't know. I don't think it'll be possible to make a meaningful initial assessment as to how the team looks on grass, as opposed to paper, until the end of Feb.

Maybe we peaked too early last year? Fine balance, because if you leave it too late confidence can go and even when it returns you can end up as the form team outside the play-offs.

Rovers do seem to be giving away a lot of penalties - has this been adapting to new interpretations, indiscipline or random reffing flux?
Are we playing fast or slow ruck rules this year?

Not sure, one of the Hull based contingent of the pmh gang that went last night said that Silverwood never got control of the ruck and hence loads of penalties for lying on and interference were given.

For me, one of our major weaknesses is not adapting during games, if you're conceding loads of penalties for trying to slow the ptb down, then whether that was in the game plan for this game or not you have to stop. Otherwise you'll get penalised for the entire game and in all likelihood someone will end up in the bin.

Edit; Christ, that green's bright, sorry about that, I'll go back to red in future!

I'll have a go, i

Is was only a friendly and to be honest I thought we looked ok in patches last night. If you look at where we were at this point last year we struggled to beat a very poor Salford side in a pre season friendly andthen went on to have an exceptional year.

The discipline thing is a worry, Silverwood didn't help much but we do give the refs the opportunities to penalise us by silly lay ons and moments of rashness, maybe early season rustiness but it is an area we need to sort because pens tend to lead to tries...

We do look a bit light up front, Vella put a stint in although he did look like a player who hasn't played for a while (and he looked like he'd slimmed down a bit) Lovegrove and Watts did well and Wheeldon was pretty solid although he does need to cut out the laying on which he's prone to do.
We definitely need another big prop in though and the sooner the better, whether thats Clinton or someone else I don't know.

The other thing to note was we invited a lot of pressure last nightthat I don't think we would normally do, The dobson short drop out that led to the last try was osmething I doubt we would ever do in a real match.

One other thing, why do we still let Dobbo kick for touch when Cookie has about 20m better range, whether it was a used for a reason in the 2nd last night or not I'm not sure but 1st half when cookie was doing them we had much better field position.