I don’t see Leigh or Fev losing a game against anyone other than each other. They are streets ahead of rest and we are in pack with remainder. Leigh tonight were too big, too powerful and too strong and they wore us down with superior fitness you would expect from.
A FT side.

Scoreline flattered us overall, even though we missed 5 conversions. Don't think Featherstone fans would have been to concerned after watching that game.

Whilst the championship can throw up some good games and entertaining rugby, it’s just as predictable in the end and the rest of us are just playing out games until we see leigh vs Fev round 2 and then the predictable final of Fev vs Leigh.

Followed the next year by (likely) Leigh v (likely) Toulouse shooting it out for promotion etc etc

We desperately need to shake things up if we ever want to be in that conversation again.

You seemed to have a ruthless streak in that second half - you could see we were tired and repeatedly exploited the gaps and missed tackles.

That won’t help you against Fev but I could see you blowing away the bottom half of the league in the 2nd half of games.

To be fair it took Fev and Toulouse a couple of seasons to build the squads they have. That said Toulouse look like they've imploded before a ball was kicked and have more or less relegated themselves already (love to be wrong) they have a fairly old squad, if they come down without Khellriah & Ford, they'll be a different team to the one that dominated last year. As we've said before, someone will be very disappointed out of Leigh and Fev. Can they still fund those types of squads consistently being in the championship? Both were playing 14 men a couple of seasons a go when they missed out on the super 8s.

We just have to keep finishing in those play-offs, keeping adding an improving and try and get in a position London we're where they're capable of beating the best team in a 1 off game.

We seem a million miles away now, but I'm hoping we'll look much better when we start getting some injured players back. Particularly Lilley.

I'm not clear what people mean about 'getting players back'. The commentators last night were talking about how we were 'missing 8 or 9'

Who?

I can think of Jordan Lilley and Elliot Kear. But apart from that we played our 1-17 squad last night (I don't count Murphy as he's basically done for). Would Kear being at FB rather than Miller have made any difference last night?

I suppose Kabula might step up - but that's not a given.

Looks like Jowitt is out now with a calf injury.

Kear
Lilley
Murphy
Hall
Kibula
Scurr
Mustapha
Fleming

Scurr,Lilley,Kear,Kibula,Mustapha would all play if fit. We are lacking impact off the bench. Not near our starting 17 last night.

The match went pretty much how I expected it to. A full time side against a part time one. A lot of money against not so much. Competitive for a good 40-50 minutes and then the difference in fitness levels takes over. The sin bin will not have helped re fitness levels either.

Having said that, there's not much excuse for the shape that Crossley, Walker and Ben Evans are in. All of them are out of shape, even for part time players.

I actually think the most worrying aspect of last night's game was our attacking structure, or lack of one. If we'd trained all week with Johnson in the halves that might explain some of it, but our passing along the line was atrocious. Receivers of the ball were stood still waiting for the pass! You will never get over the advantage line doing this, they should be running as they receive the pass not standing still waiting for the ball!

Missing players will obviously have an impact on performance but the attacking structure shouldn't really suffer - the drills are always the same and the players should know how deep to line up etc. I hate to say it but we looked poorly coached.

I accept that Lilley and Kear would be first choice.

Who would have dropped out from the 17 last night to include Scurr. Kibula and Musapha? Or are we saying that Ben Evans shouldn't be in 17? Or that we signed Chester Butler to play in our reserves.

And Mustapha isn't even our player. We saw the problems with relying on other team's players when Corey Johnson got oiked back to Leeds just before kick off last night.

I'm not nit-picking. Yes we had a few injured players last night. But then so did Leigh. EVERY team has injuries for every game. I don't doubt that Barrow will have a few missing on Sunday. That's why we have squads.

We can't keep using the 'we had a few injuries' line like Kear did after the game last night. We have a squad for a reason. Last night was a very representative team given our position. Injuries were not the reason we got clobbered .