Frustrating we let them back in. Don't feel it's quite like the weakness of the team from last year. The serious stuff starts now with some important games coming up. Nobbys given everyone a chance to prove themselves. 8 changes over two games won't have helped. Plus we were missing our 3 best players in Donaldson, Souter & Keyes. We've done what we needed and some important players have been rested so we're not worrying about minutes and fatigue at the important part of the season. Think they'll be real focus now on this important period coming up.

We looked unstoppable for the first half hour. Scored a point a minute. Then a few things caused disruption. First I thought the subs coming on seemed to change things a bit. We lost a bit of go forward and then after Meadows threw that intercept he seemed to be playing more in front of the Hunslet defence so that made us easier to read.



Second half was badly disrupted by us losing Holmes. Bayley Liu is not a centre and his defence down that right side reminded me of Chester Butler playing centre at Keighley when the Cougars stuffed us.



Hallas came on and got into a personal battle with Larroyer. This was the opposite of what we needed. We needed to be staying composed and playing rugby not getting into a dog fight. In another game he would've been yellow carded.



Playing into a really strong wind didn't help either. Hunslet's kicking game was also much better than ours. Same as the London match. It was helped by Taufua making a lot of mistakes which was rare for him.



Thought Mason went OK. Waine didn't get much ball. Ott looked classy but tired as the game went on. Hallas should not be playing hooker. Liu was good at second row but poor at centre.

Hallas still has the rotten culture from 2022. I'd have never brought him back. He's constantly getting into personal battles and teams are clearly targeting him. There's only ever going to be one winnner when he gets dragged into that stuff. He's had ample opportunity to eradicate it from his game. He did it again last week. It was the 5th tackle, referee clearly shouted held (even I heard it from the back of the terrace) yet he decided to dump the player, stand over him like he was the winner and conceded a penalty on the last tackle. Those sorts of actions cost us numerous times last year and will again this year unless it resolved. You look at the composure and controlled aggression of Donno has and there's no comparison.

I thought Ott looked good and at times seemed frustrated when the speed of play dropped... I honestly thought Hallas had showed some improvement against London, but getting dragged into nonsense with Larroyer is just not acceptable. Souter/Ott/Lilley are definitely the right players to battle it out for that hooker role.