Gutted. Didn’t think Trin ran as hard as Leigh in first half. Too many errors. Playing with only one half back as O Russell so poor and two bad mistakes by Rourke led to an inevitable loss.


Never mind just about getting as many wins as possible now to the end of SL season…

Conversation is wasted on you Cocky so good night 

A couple of major errors cost us. We are still going toe to toe against the top teams even with injuries.


Alas it's only going to get harder.


Lost Matty Russell with broken ribs and Olly Rusell broken hand.


No idea who will play 6 against Sts.

I actually reckon we were pretty lucky to only be 0-6 down at half time. We lost the middle which is unlike us, and we never looked like getting round them either. And they’d clearly learned how to deal with Hood.


At half time Powell must have told them to start throwing the ball more early in our sets, and it worked. Vagana and Pratt looked threatening with early ball, and like most people once Rourke scored I thought we’d cracked it. We wouldn’t let them get in the wrestle again. Then Rourke dropped his easiest catch of the night (often the way isn’t it), and neither Smith nor Lino could handle Niu. Then that pass from Rourke… horror show, and he’ll remember that forever, but he’ll also learn from it. To me it’s symptomatic of playing positive rugby - Dazball as we call it - the same reason we got back in the game in the first place. Obviously that pass wasn’t on, but we’ve all seen wingers race 90 metres to score off similar plays. That’s sport. 


Individually, I thought Johnstone, Pratt, Lino, Vagana, and Rodwell shone. But we’re really missing Trueman. I’ve now seen enough of Olly Russell to know he’s a dead set Championship halfback. If you’re going to carry a half who can’t tackle, he’d better be unbelievable on the ball, and frankly Russell can just kick and pass a bit. Fingers crossed Mills has got something in the works for next year. Looks like Russell will be out for a while with a broken hand anyway, so we need Trueman playing even if patched up now.

So disappointing to lose last night.   Although I feared it, as so often in back-to-back matches between evenly matched teams, the one that wins the league match loses the following cup match (or vice versa).  It happens so often.


The only consolation I can find (and it's not really a consolation at the time) is to see how far we've come in a couple of years.


Two years ago, in the first few months of 2023, we got stuffed by Leigh 0-32 (league, home), 12-40 (cup, home) and 4-30 (league, at Newcastle).  Compare that to this season, where we're pretty much competing with all the better teams.