Caught Sandy's radio interview - his referee deflector shield is starting to grate.

I'm no Hicks fan but I certainly don't think he was the difference. One of two things go for and against teams each and every week. The Salter tackled/voluntary tackle looked alright IMO. Salter got down to try and avoid a drop out, no Cas player attempted to tackle him - Hicks clearly told him to get up, he then makes some attempt to get up - Cas lift/force him back for a drop out. Best case (at that moment) was a drop out, another referee would've give a penalty for a voluntary tackle. Win some lose some. We failed to defend the resulting drop out. Sandy never mentioned our try before half time being clearly forward or our failure to shut out/build on going 10pts in front in the 2nd half. We need to sort our own reoccurring problems out, instead of putting them @ the officials door.



Fair play to Cas, they have good options - but our reoccurring fragility is worrying.

Good call

That's our season

Good in patches, polar opposite in others.



Sadly, our good patches more often have expired after an hour this season

Good post,too easy to blame someone else,our defence is not good enough full stop,get it sorted mr sandercock rather than blaming/moaning about refs every week because it cant be putting us in a good light at the rfl.

they are e though, doesnt look good i agree but some decisions are diabolical for all teams

We had Alibert pinging Bradford for offside before he'd even called the tackle held, he then realised he gave the penalty for them holding down. We also had Matt 'Peyton Manning' Diskin up to his usual tricks and not being picked once. He also signalled offside for a high shot as well.

they are worse since they went proffesional

I'm not gonna blame the ref, if we can't tackle then we will lose, Cas had more enthusiasm than us, they deserved it, we got what we deserved, nothing.

Quote east hull FC fan="east hull FC fan"What are you quoting there? Because that's not what he said on blunderside.'" www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/17526235

Quote east hull FC fan="east hull FC fan"What are you quoting there? Because that's not what he said on blunderside.'" www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/17526235

Transition season this, was always going to be.



I said before the season that sneaking into the play offs is the achievable goal and I still feel that way.



The defence is a major worry in the short term, but Sandercocks mission is to make this club more sustainable by bringing through the youth and putting structures in place to enable us to have a consistent production line of talent.



Let's not forget this.

I agree with you on all you have said sandra but we have now learnt how to score tries can we please learn how to defend please

If devolping youth is playing the likes of latus and murrell in front of younger players then he's not doing his job,too many people on here who think our players are better than they really are.Also when the under 20's get beat by as many as they did last night then there is not much coming through,probably more morgan's fault than sandercock.Transition is just an excuse as other clubs have new coaches as well and they are all not struggling,our neighbours unfortunately being one of them.At the end of the day injuries should affect your cohesion in attack,but we have no problem,we just have a defence with more holes in it than a string vest and that should have been put right by now.Wrong appointment IMO.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... 0_03_2012/ Sandercock interview about 3hrs 10mins in. Needs to accept we dont have video refs at every game. No point going on about it each week

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... 0_03_2012/ Sandercock interview about 3hrs 10mins in. Needs to accept we dont have video refs at every game. No point going on about it each week

Yeah, that clearly needs to improve.



Unfortunately, where we're weakest in defence is probably the most difficult position to defend. i.e. In the centre/second row channel.



I don't think we can underestimate how much we're missing Galea, he completely galvanises our right side. In a typically Roversesque quirk of fate, we seem to have evened this up by also forgetting how to defend down the left!



Something else I've noticed is that we've developed a stupid habit of going for big shoulder charges. This is fine if you follow up with an effective tackle, however, we're allowing people to bounce off and then either off load or make more metres. Particular offenders are Whithers and Mika.



Edit: I was talking about defence in reply to cravenpark1.

I couldn't go last night so can't really comment on the game but I was very wary of Cas before the game.



I will say that the individual improvement of players has been pretty awesome and in turn the potential of the squad has improved massively IMO which is no real surprise to me because of CS's track record in Aus.



However, he's still a rookie as a first team coach in terms of setting game plans etc. but smashing the top of the table one week and then losing to the bottom of the table team the next means the erratic nature of our performances seems to have continued on from previous seasons.



Hopefully CS will be able to narrow the gap between our good and bad performances and we'll move up the table.

I thought Murrell had a good game at 6 for us last night, as he did against Huddersfield last week. Fair enough if we have a Lomax or Gaskill in the 20's play them, but to the best of my knowledge we don't.

I noticed in an earlier post Murrell was one of the players listed to go at the end of the season, I would suggest that his utility value alone would make him well worth retaining.

You're entitled to your opinion but I think you're over reacting.



Youth results aren't particularly important, it's whether we get a through put to the first team that's important. Now, let's also understand that a good hit rate is probably only about one player coming through every other season and our academy is only just past the fledgling stage.



Transition isn't an excuse, it's where we are.



We need and should give Sandercock until at least the middle of next season, no club ever succeeds by changing the coach every six months.

Another point about youth is bringing them through in the correct way, let's play them all, see them get smashed and then ruined for the rest of their careers, that'll work!

Think I said in the predictions it could be a 4 point swing either way. A couple of big moments in the game. When at 28-22 up, you went for goal with still 20 minutes to go. Whereas you were breaking through our defence at will. I think you only got down our end once after that. In contrast, with 13 minutes to go, 2 points down, we opted not to kick to tie the game. He who dares....

So we have no youth coming thru' - playing the likes of Latus/Murrell over no one, is hardly not doing your job. Just on that, Latus never played and Murrell had a solid game, hell he even made a try assist break.



Part of Sandercock's remit was to oversee our entire youth set up. He can't do that within a few months .... He's not a miracle worker (your words)

Fair point. Stick or twist.

I don't know if you were the Cas fan stood next to us (with blonde daughter) because if not he made the exact same point, we actually let Cas off the hook by doing this as we were really pressurising their line at this point.

I thought this was the big moment in the game as you say, I thought that Rovers would have almost certainly scored given the fragility of our defence in that period of the game.

I did feel it was an unusual match really, as I felt both teams combined spells of great attacking rugby with silly mistakes and poor defence, with quite a lot of inconsistency throughout the match. I was hugely impressed by (I forget his name, number 20, Cox I believe?!) and the ever impressive Dobson. I remember seeing the young second row play in the 9s tournament not long back and thought he looked decent, glad to see he's made it into the first team.

On a final note, just seeing what Sandercock has said about the "turning point" of the game, I'm really suprised by this, as I thought the player could have/should have been penalised for a voluntary tackle, as did a couple of Rovers fans next to me, so I find that one puzzling. Having said that I'm sure once you get game breakers like Blake Green, Ben Galea etc back you'll go up a notch.

Best of luck for the rest of the season!

hahaha no. No love child for me just yet. It was a strange game at times. late in the second half, when we kicked twice on the last tackle from one side of the field to the other, then eventually got 6 more from it. A sign of 2 teams who struggle defensively.

Murrell did have another good game last night, waltzed through the Cas line to set up our last try.