Looking forward to this game on multiple levels . Despite some enthusiastic fans on FB I see this as a 50/50 game and at the beginning of the season would have tipped bradford to win given their recruitment.  It appears that keyes and meadows have yet to click but that could happen soon. Bradford appear to play better away from odsal so I'm expecting a significant challenge.  On a tactical level we have been really good both offensively and defensively however our weakness which I think bradford will exploit is jouffrett , salty n tibbs being suspect under the high ball only brad graham has shone in this area. 


The battle of the packs is the most exciting one with at long last it being one of our strengths , with inman and obrien thriving around the ruck as a consequence of our pack giving hansen and woody plenty of freedom to set up plays , can bradfords big men survive our speed around the ruck? Can fax handle a peppering of high balls into the corners .


Let the fun begin. 

A bit if mind games going on here. Hansen will play and so will Doro.

Well certainly miss our two for different reasons.


Hansen has been playing really well with 2 recent MoM performances scoring himself, good link / distribution in attack for the rest of the team and a good kicking game and from the options were not going to replace him.


Restall to 1 and LJ into the haves is one.


Or maybe Inman at 7 with O Brien and Davies filling the 9 spots with LJ staying at 1 with a bucket shared with Salty and Tibbs to help them catch the high balls.


Dixon ( along with Douglas but he splaying ) has added the much needed size we?ve missed and with a loanee second row coming in Tanagata could go back into the middle with Calcott back to cover for Dixon and Hird being out, the downside of that Tangata has been playing well in the second row with is mobility running against slightly smaller guys and has linked up with JWH short pop up ball in the left channel so I d only move him if it was forced.


Anyway with excuses in place if we lose enough of the armchair coach so over to the real thing Mr Eastmond and see what he comes up with.

Excellent performance and best atmosphere at the Shay for a long time. Bulls defence in the first half won it for them, several times I was convinced we were going to score only for excellent defence to keep them out. Only disappointment for me was Meadows breakaway try - if we'd kept them to nil in the first half think we'd have won. Yet again no weak links in the Fax team, with incredible commitment shown by all against a much bigger team. My MOM would have been Tangata or Crooks both of whom were exceptional, McCarron ran and tackled strongly - and also liked look of the lad from Warrington. Crooks looked knackered at the end - with the physicality of the game and our very small squad really hope all the effort put in isn't too costly in terms of injured players.

First of all what a crowd, must be our biggest in a number of years for a league game. Hopefully plenty of those will come back again next week, it was great to have the ground rocking like that.

On the game I just feel we didn't post enough points in that first 30 minutes where we totally dominated, another try then and I think we could have won that game. We clearly missed Hansen more than Dixon as our pack matched the huge Bradford pack for most of the game and it really just came down to the half backs. At times we looked a little lost and were clearly missing somebody leading us around the pitch, as good as Inman is at hooker, he isn't a natural half back and unfortunatley Woody was missing for most of the game but you just kept hoping he could create a bit of magic for us late on as he can be a true game breaker. We had chances to win it late on but just forced things a little bit, the Tibbs kick, the Graham(I think it was him) offload on their line.


All that said there was nothing between the two teams maybe apart from 800k in money on wages and although its a loss, for me Bradford have the best squad in the league by some distance and we could have won that one.  I think we would have taken 6 from 7 and 2 points clear at the top of the league before the season started so there is a lot to build on. Never thought I would say this after the last few years but I actually can't wait to hear what Kyle Eastmond says about the game and how he will react to our first league loss, whatever he has done is clearly paying off and fans appreciate and can tell when a group of players are giving 100% and fighting for each other. For the nostalgic amongst us this group very much reminds me of '98 when we put together a group of cast offs or past its and we went on to produce one of our best seasons in a decade. Fingers crossed as and lets enjoy this.