Anyone know why Chester Butler is out?

Nothing in the press or from the club regarding his absence. Assume he picked up a knock in the Midlands cup game.

Jowitt on the bench. Strange one that as he's been playing FB this year. So when he comes on for Flanagan and Lilley goes in at Hooker, Jowitt is either going to go in at HB where he's not been playing, or he goes at FB and Holmes in at HB causing quite a number of positional changes during the game.

What a farce from the touchie. He's no where near the line.

Complete our sets, we win this game.

HT. Safari Sagudi. Keep it up Bulls!

Blackmore and Arundel helped off the field with injuries. Hope it’s not too serious!!

God we make it hard for ourselves! Comfortably the better team for 79 mins.

Great derby. Well done Bulls. Bragging rights!

In SL, Rivals Round was pretty much a resounding success:



Two scores in it as Cas beat Wakey;

Eight points separated Wigan & Saints;

Same for a Warrington win at Cats;

Salford edged Leigh by 2;

Leeds edged Hudds by 1.

The only outlier being KR’s trouncing of FC on the latter’s own midden.



The fixture fixers tried to do the same in The Champ, but there are so many rag, tag and bobtail teams therein that it was virtually impossible. There were examples though:



Barrow lost by only 2 against Whitehaven;

Fev beat Batley by just 8;

…and, of course, Bradford nicked the spoils by 4 at Fax!



When does the current Sky deal end? IMG should be getting all these games available to view on various media including (importantly) some more on terrestrial TV.



Bongser followed The Bulls match tonight by hopping twixt The Beeb, Flashscore and Bulls Twitter looking for updates.



Gotta say that whilst B&B does not suffer from either of the below conditions, your Twitter feed’s Bradford try “celebratories” could be harmful to epileptics and migraine sufferers - and possibly be a danger to shipping!



Then again, I’ve just seen Leigh Leopards’ 2023 Magic Weekend shirt!!!!!!



Good win, lads. Enjoy.

Ŵhat a f*****g win!!

Great entertainment from both teams in monsoon conditions at times.

Excellent win away from home and 1st one of the season to boot. I thought it came down to quality and we just had that little bit more than Halifax…



Still we nearly blew it by gifting the blue sox some points at the end, but full marks for effort and discipline over the 80 mins. Just hope there is something left in the tank for Batley..

What a win! Never mind Jesus Christ rising, Billy Jowitt rising to collect that bomb was biblical. Incredible take that won us the game.



I felt we played the conditions really well and won the arm wrestle. Patton and Lilley both produced some fantastic tactical kicking to turn the Fax players around. 2 of their scores game from our mistakes. Cut that out and the game isn’t as tense and close as it should have been. As somebody stated earlier, we were the better team for 78 mins.



Walters and Donaldson were a handful and kept causing problems for the Halifax defence. If we ask nicely can we have them back again next week, Rohan? I felt that they targeted Appo quite a bit tonight but he handled himself well after his early error.



Quite a few that could have taken home the MOTM award. Patton, Lilley and Jowitt played well alongside Donno, Walters and Thompson.

Pack was really good, Donaldson runs it in far above his weight and has still got a great workrate. Patton in the form of early last season and Holmes was solid again.

If Donaldson's SL career is at an end after this season, I'd be doing everything we can to get him back here permnantly.

Spot on

Especially if AJ is on his way.

Bewdaful

Cracking game, score line flattered Fax a little I thought. Defence and enthusiasm were excellent. Middles were dominant for large parts of the game and I include Appo, Baldwinson, Scurr as well as Bibby, Donaldson and Walters in that. Keyes had an uncomfortable game which, along with Holmes’ positioning negated a lot of his tactical kicking. Well done boys. The other interesting thing is we’ve won 5/8. Only 2 of those are against teams in the bottom half of the table. We’ve now played everyone in the top half

Indeed. Think facing a tough Batley team who have had 3 extra days recovery time than ourselves will be too much of an ask. However after that, we play 4 of the current bottom 5 plus Keighley at the bash and a real opportunity to string some wins together. None of the them will be easy games as results have shown. But with the table as tight as it is, any team that strings 4 or 5 wins together could find themselves very high up in the table. Things could look very rosey when we play Fax on 18th June.

It makes the brainfarts against Keefly and York even more irritating.... What might have been now?

The attitude was much improved on the Keighley debacle. We came out ready to play this time. Thought the pack was immense. It helps to have a couple of old heads out there, you could see Thompson and Donaldson doing plenty of talking. Thought Holmes was excellent at the back. Again I thought Lilley was most effective when he went to dummy half. Jowitt's take at the end was another highlight.



It was so important that we capitalised on the opposition errors and for the most part we did that. They really didn't help themselves with their errors, ill discipline and booting the ball out on the full twice from kick offs is unforgiveable. Some of the penalties they gave away were very relieving and lifted the pressure at key moments. Their sin bin was utterly needless too. I bet Grix is pulling his hair out.



Losing Blackmore and Arundal in quick succession meant it was squeaky bum time at the end when we had 12 men on the field and no subs left. Dunning seemed to suggest that Blackmore's injury was a dead leg but to me it looked like he pulled something. Arundal's was meant to be cramp. With DFJ still doubtful due to a knee injury we could again be depleted in the backs next week.

To be fair, we’ve done alright considering we’ve had Walker out since minute 2.



Lawrence and Thompson have been sidelined for nearly half the games.



Our starting second rower retired before a ball was kicked.



Matongo has been out since the 1 game he played.



We’ve got bodies to come back over these next 5 games as well as 3 back from bans.

We may have plenty coming back which is good but we're not exactly blessed with outside backs.



How did that Fijian lad look versus Midlands Hurricanes? Could he be on option on the wing if needed?