Random thoughts in no particular order

Fair result on balance of play

York always looked much more capable of making significant metres than we did

Again, we were our own worst enemies. Any of the many chances we bombed could have turned the tide of the match, you simply can't afford to fritter away possession like we do, both halves. Running in touch, forced dead in goal, bombing tryscoring passes, dumb penalties, sequence of cheap turnovers.

Need a lot of work on markers, York made miles from the PTB all day. in contrast, we found it very hard to make metres, and sometimes it seemed likle just a long sequence of short range hitups and a slow PTB. Even when we were chasing the game.

York's tactics blatantly included disrupting anything we ever got going, and for the large part, they got away with it. Giving away a penalty when that is what you aim to do is not a deterrent. One guy in fairness did get binned, but despite the number of infringements, no team warning. Weird.

Looked to me like dead set try from Chisholm's kick, flagrant professional foul, no sin bin. Inexplicable. we may not have on balance deserved it but I'm pretty sure if not for the illegal holding back, we would have skated under the posts, and very likely gone on to win the game. Don't like to see teams profit from professional foul play, but York did.

At the moment we look like a low-mid-table side at best. We need a lot of improvement if we are not to be in the relegation mix.

I agree with you FA. I think it all went wrong though when we had a cheerleader stretchered off. You can't compete in this league if your a cheerleader down.

Most of that id agree with.

My random thoughts.

Lacking composure in the 1st half partucularly. Bombed a couple of trys.

Kicking game was poor yet again. 2 many 7 tackle sets just like last friday.

Flannagan had a shocker from the second he set foot on the pitch

Massivly missing Green Peltier and Bustin. Kirk and Olsi offered very little. Cant knock Kirks effort but hes just an easy target. When every one is fit, he misses out for me. York lookd stronger down the middle than us. I may be being over critical but Crossley hasnt seemed at his best yet either.

Attack was terrible close to their line. We are so easy to defend against. 2 many settlers or turning it back in side to a forward. Our 3/4 line is top drawer for this level we should be killing teams out wide.
The few times we did get the ball wide we scored.

The passin today was terrible. So many balls on the deck or behind someone.

Outstanding comment



Agree, I think York just deserved the win although they were there for the taking. The Webster forward pass with the line begging at the start of the game set the tone. When we managed to put the ball through a few hands we looked dangerous. This didn't happen til the second half though. In terms of forwards we are desperately missing some punch in the middle. I hope that's provided when Bustin and Peltier return. Big wraps to Crossley who had to do the work of two props today and ran his blood to water. It's a long season and this is a hard league with no easy games at all. There is loads time to turn it round.

I wonder how long we’ll continue with the style of play that obviously isn’t working. Our style of play is boring, unimaginative, predictable and a problem when we don’t have our middle. We might have got away with walking over teams in league 1, we won’t in this division.

i have said we would be middle of the league this year to date i haven't seen anything to change my mind, I also think York's 3rd try in the corner was grounded by the bulls and the ref got it wrong for a change lol.

Too much ineffective one up drives that made very little ground. After the break we changed tack for a while and shifted the ball quickly along the line to our backs which worked but then fell back into the one up drives. Very poor reffing, Pickersgill deffo looked to have grounded the ball from where I was and will someone please spend some time with Chisholm on his tackling technique, it's terrible.

Couldn’t make the match so can only comment from the radio commentary. However it seemed like a large percentage of last tackle options resulted in a cross field kick, is this now our desperation go to tactic if we cannot score?

I think games like this are the difference between making the top 5 or missing out. Obviously there is still a long way to go but dropping points at home against a closely matched rival makes the job a whole lot tougher. York last year seemed very skilled at holding out for the points in those close matches, it’s an attribute I think have yet to master. When you look at the team sheet we have a few more experienced heads so I think we are definitely underperforming right now. Doesn’t get any easier with Toulouse up next at Odsal, masssive improvement required.

Couldn't disagree with anyone on this page. Highly frustrating, and the Ref was very poor. One has to ask the definition of Obstruction? Never seen such a blatant crossing offence that resulted in a try to York. They have learned to manipulate the ref. whilst we seemed only to upset him, , like last week in fact! Were York the Saints, whilst we were the sinners?

Didn't quite get our line up. 3 props, one is still very young and isn't dominating anyone, then two back-rowers on the bench who are both capable of playing 80 mins as are both the starters.

I said earlier in the week I wanted us to really attack York, but with Hallas at LF, it just seems to me we are setup to try and stay in the game, then kick to Ethan. We should be more confident, put Minchella at loose and use our back line. Didn't one of Yorks wingers go off injured not to come back on. Yet from listening to the radio we didn't use that talented back line. I really want to see Kear set us up to go attack the opposition, dictate the play, drag the opposition around the field, rather than the Conservative, stay in the game then try and sucker punch them with a kick to the corner tactics. Allowing York to dictate the pace plays into their hands.

3 times we've played York and I don't think we've deserved to win any.

I've said it before but we look poorly coached. I know we're going to struggle to win collisions until we can get Green, Bustin and Peltier back in the side but even today when we had possession inside York's 20 we either made a mistake, ran the ball out of touch or put in a wasteful kick.
There's just no structure to our attack whatsoever. The one time we got some quick ball to our centre and we scored from it!
Think I counted maybe only one or two offloads the entire game, hardly anybody can draw a man, we have no dummy runners or set plays to force defenders into making decisions. We're just far too easy to defend against.

And as if our poor play wasn't bad enough, John Kear is now leaving us all scratching our heads with his team selections as well. Today was Workington at home from last season all over again. As soon as I saw those bench options I knew we would lose.

In some ways I'm not too fussed, I find myself quite apathetic towards this entire season because we've absolutely no hope of competing with Toronto for promotion and (hopefully) will win enough games to not finish in the bottom two. So when you look at it that way, there's very little to play for, especially with the distribution of central funding becoming more normalised.

Meh.

I couldn’t make the game today but managed to catch the second half on the radio.

I was very disappointed with the result and I felt this is the type of game at home that we need to win if we want to push for the play offs.

I have to say though, I think there’s quite a lot of negativity to say we are a newly promoted side. I still get the feeling that some fans feel like we’re a special case, we should never have been in L1 and as such we’re looking at our side differently to how we’d look at a neutral side who’ve just been promoted.

We’re 4 games in and we’ve still got a lot of good players to come into the side (Peltier, Bustin & Keyes).

I don’t think we will be in the relegation mix and I still hope we can push for the play offs.

Maybe it’s the other way round and I’m being too positive!