Preseason friendlies are not about win, lose or draw.

They are about the next stage in development, preparation and ‘a warm up’

Personally, I am quite pleased that Gentle did not get sucked in to the media hype of, the false importance of winning the preseason ‘friendly’ derby.
You don’t go into a match without a proper warm up, and the same applies to a hard season ahead of you. You must build up speed, not go all out and get unnecessary injuries, and then fade out quickly before the finishing post.

Some have pointed out that KR out enthused, and had more desire and compassion to win. Whilst I would expect their warm up and preparations, to have been upped from ours, I think they may have overcooked and it cost and will cost them when it most matters.

According to an interview with Gentle, the team/squad was going into this game as if it was a SL fixture.

they probably did approach it in the same way, but the fact it was our first game probably had an impact.

What would you rather have, won a friendly at a fairly substantial cost in terms of injuries, or lost a friendly and have your full squad available for when the real games start?

It all helps to sell tickets!!

Talk of training the house down, been way ahead of schedule in pre-season, once again we have heard all these stories and the fact Gentle came out and said how seriously they was taking the game.

Fairly substantial loss?

Very bad news regarding Beaumont(sp) but IMO highly unlikely to feature much this season.

Galea is a loss of course but sounds like its a short/medium term injury, plus S/R is probably our strongest part of the squad.

Hodgson sounds like he may be back for the opener.

I think our pre-season has gone well and loads to be positive about! Seems like we have got over the big loss to Fev!

win, tight or draw?

I think you meant to say win, lose or draw unless you were talking about the squad having an unfortunate case of the trots lol

The injuries incurred by Rovers would have happened regardless of the intensity which the team played the game, or indeed the opposition. It's naff to lose players to injury, even more naff to lose them in a pre-season game.

I'm struggling to understand how (according to to OP) our preparations "will cost us when it matters".

Rationalising, innit?

Bent ref, try-hard opposition, pacing ourselves and so on.

The OP is right - the result doesn't matter. The analysis that it arose from Rovers extra enthusiasm, because after all they're obviously , and that that Herculean effort contributed to injuries, I would view as undermining a legitimate point.

Whilst I agree with the statement given as the title of this thread, derbies are different. Derbies are about winning. As the great man wrote in this weeks diary "Derby's are important".

I wouldn't want to lose by 50, because that would damage confidence. But if we'd gone down by 6 and come through with a clean bill of health, I'd have been very happy with that.

Well winning may be important to some, but if so then derbies should never be a preseason friendly, or at least never your first friendly.