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Missed a golden drop goal opportunity with about 6 minutes left, then 2 more in the final couple of sets. PTB was poorly reffed, very slow, I don't recall any 6 agains, and only one penalty to Wigan all night.

Not the end of the world, but game management was poor when we should have been setting up drop goals. Field will be thinking about the pass for a long time....

Ended up getting back on M6 at Haydock as J25 shut,

adiddy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:32 am Despite us losing the game I thoroughly enjoyed that!! First game of the season and what a full blooded affair it was!! Can't win them all but happy if I'm entertained when we do lose and last night I was entertained.

Agree with that, my thoughts also.

good hard game for the 1st run out of the season and players from both sides looked be in decent condition, it normally takes a couple of games to see a game anything like that intensity

ref allowed a slow POTB which was frustrating but that was for both sides, although it felt like they got some quicker POTB, and effectively the defence was up quickly in the attacking sides face

much as everyone is saying we created nothing, and it was boring, we created a lot more than Leigh, but either didnt take the chance or they put in some good scrambling defence. On another day, we may have scored 2-3 tries, but we didnt and need to learn from that

Faz 10 min sinbinning was stupid, and the irony is that the ref was looking at the blatant obstruction, but chose to bin him (rightly) for kicking the ball away, and not give the penalty for obstruction. No way was it going to be a penalty try, absolutely should have been a penalty and possible sin binning for Hughes, but not a penalty try in the memory of man as they had players back covering it

one final query, how did Umyla Hanley get motm? I didnt notice him on the pitch and there were players from Leigh far more deserving IMO

the pieman wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:01 am good hard game for the 1st run out of the season and players from both sides looked be in decent condition, it normally takes a couple of games to see a game anything like that intensity

ref allowed a slow POTB which was frustrating but that was for both sides, although it felt like they got some quicker POTB, and effectively the defence was up quickly in the attacking sides face

much as everyone is saying we created nothing, and it was boring, we created a lot more than Leigh, but either didnt take the chance or they put in some good scrambling defence. On another day, we may have scored 2-3 tries, but we didnt and need to learn from that

Faz 10 min sinbinning was stupid, and the irony is that the ref was looking at the blatant obstruction, but chose to bin him (rightly) for kicking the ball away, and not give the penalty for obstruction. No way was it going to be a penalty try, absolutely should have been a penalty and possible sin binning for Hughes, but not a penalty try in the memory of man as they had players back covering it

one final query, how did Umyla Hanley get motm? I didnt notice him on the pitch and there were players from Leigh far more deserving IMO

Personally thought him and the other centre had very good games.

Fujiman wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:11 am

the pieman wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:01 am good hard game for the 1st run out of the season and players from both sides looked be in decent condition, it normally takes a couple of games to see a game anything like that intensity

ref allowed a slow POTB which was frustrating but that was for both sides, although it felt like they got some quicker POTB, and effectively the defence was up quickly in the attacking sides face

much as everyone is saying we created nothing, and it was boring, we created a lot more than Leigh, but either didnt take the chance or they put in some good scrambling defence. On another day, we may have scored 2-3 tries, but we didnt and need to learn from that

Faz 10 min sinbinning was stupid, and the irony is that the ref was looking at the blatant obstruction, but chose to bin him (rightly) for kicking the ball away, and not give the penalty for obstruction. No way was it going to be a penalty try, absolutely should have been a penalty and possible sin binning for Hughes, but not a penalty try in the memory of man as they had players back covering it

one final query, how did Umyla Hanley get motm? I didnt notice him on the pitch and there were players from Leigh far more deserving IMO

Personally thought him and the other centre had very good games.

Thought Leighs centre's made the difference.

jobo wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:18 am

Fujiman wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:11 am

the pieman wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:01 am good hard game for the 1st run out of the season and players from both sides looked be in decent condition, it normally takes a couple of games to see a game anything like that intensity

ref allowed a slow POTB which was frustrating but that was for both sides, although it felt like they got some quicker POTB, and effectively the defence was up quickly in the attacking sides face

much as everyone is saying we created nothing, and it was boring, we created a lot more than Leigh, but either didnt take the chance or they put in some good scrambling defence. On another day, we may have scored 2-3 tries, but we didnt and need to learn from that

Faz 10 min sinbinning was stupid, and the irony is that the ref was looking at the blatant obstruction, but chose to bin him (rightly) for kicking the ball away, and not give the penalty for obstruction. No way was it going to be a penalty try, absolutely should have been a penalty and possible sin binning for Hughes, but not a penalty try in the memory of man as they had players back covering it

one final query, how did Umyla Hanley get motm? I didnt notice him on the pitch and there were players from Leigh far more deserving IMO

Personally thought him and the other centre had very good games.

Thought Leighs centre's made the difference.

i'd agree the other guy was very good both defensively and in attack he made good yards, and i noticed he was on the pitch

i thought Armstrong caused us some problems, and his little break led to the winning drop goal as he bust a tackle, made some yards, but more importantly got a quick potb

Mulhearn (but i can say this about most of the forwards) was good all night and made good yards, as did the couple of subs that came on

my query was more i didnt really notice him, and thought others were more deserving, but happy to be corrected

Has to be one of the most bizarre games I have ever been to for the score line at full time and the end result.

I felt we had much better field position in the first half, the majority of our last play kicks were taken in Leigh's half, whereas Leigh mainly kicked from in their own half, we just couldn't capitalise on it. I thought we should have brought Paddy on in the first half when the first regular game of the season would have been taking it's toll on some of the Leigh players, we could have made some extra field position and challenged the try line more.

Second half was more even for field position, Leigh never looked threatening in any way and we dealt with mostly everything they threw at us, a few missed tackles giving them an extra 20m or so through the middle but other than that they never looked like scoring a try.

We made too many dumb decisions, not passing when the plays were on and I am not just referring to Field, we were too content to just keep looking for field position, and what has happened to those spiralling bombs that Smith used to put up that put the fear of god into wingers/fullbacks, not seen one of those for a few seasons now, 'attacking' kicks were either too long or too low, and therefore not putting enough doubt or pressure on the defender.

Lets hope things click a little better before Vegas as I wouldn't want to see a similar game over there in front of the Aussies or the Yanks.

First game down and a bizarre and disappointing result but we move on to the next round with hopefully a few things fixed up.

Thanks for your response with the attendance, Josie. I thought I'd posted a longer reply, but it hasn't appeared - very confused by adverts above, below and in the middle of posts. I'm getting old

Blackpool_Pie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:00 am Despite the above post, I think we handled the game very very poorly. At no point did we deviate from the game plan which has served us pretty well in the past. We stuck to trying to keep in the arm wrestle. Play it safe most of the time, defend well, keep high completion rates and kick well. We're so used to doing that and getting a score from doing this relentlessly and eventually forcing other teams to play a little more risky, but leigh matched us and started to get on top of the arm wrestle in the second half. We didn't see any urgency ball in hand. Defence was very good (from both sides) and we didn't do enough to break them down. We didn't have a plan B for when French didn't bail us out or when Wardle couldn't power over. Leigh were brilliant defensively it must be said, but we didn't really test them enough.

You were correct in your other post about there being no set restarts and I don't understand why. If the refs have been told to speed ro keep the penalties down I don’t see how set restarts are a problem doing that and due to the lying on and messing about at the PTB I didn’t really understand why there were none.

As to game management you are right, it was awful. I think I am even madder today about Harry Smith kicking on the fourth tackle with 90 seconds on the clock instead of setting up for a drop goal. If was an incredibly stupid play to do that then and not go for the drop.

I've posted elsewhere about Moore's incompetence but we weren't very good and Leigh were much improved in defence but offered nothing in attack. Our left side was fine (Marshall, Wardle, Nsemba) but not much happening elsewhere. Hope Field gets some passing lessons and some proper studs to play in for the next game. I didn't understand spelling Ellis for Hill, who's not a LF and we lost impetus when that happened. If we're not going to use Mago, then give the bench spot to someone else although I thought Byrne and to a lesser extent, Dupree, played well. I'm guessing we'll now lose Keighran for a match or two.
If killing the PTB carries on, we won't ever see that attendance again.