2024 thread on other Championship teams

4 hours ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

This would have been SO much better if you had got Mr O'Neill senior to do his own voice-over on the clip in the style of Mick Morgan's famous one for Cas v Wigan..."ooh, what about that, send him off, send the dirty get off!"

I can't spake

Some nice empty seats at Hull yesterday in their meaningless fixture with Huddersfield. IMGs master plan looks like it might be starting to kick in.

17 minutes ago, J Phil Loxton said:

Some nice empty seats at Hull yesterday in their meaningless fixture with Huddersfield. IMGs master plan looks like it might be starting to kick in.

Imagine what it's going to be like in August and September when they've got home games against Cas and Catalans.

6 games in and already half the league has nothing to play for  

14 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

Imagine what it's going to be like in August and September when they've got home games against Cas and Catalans.

Tell you what though. There plan is actually working because without any people in it, you can tell what a nice stadium that Hull have got and that's what it's all about.

It now seems , as everyone I talk to agrees , that the RFL have a death wish. IMG have been a total expensive disaster.

The life blood of sport . at all levels, needs competition, and competition means promotion and relegation no matter how painful if can be , as each team is in a circle , top one minute , bottom next. It may take years but have faith and it will happen success , or failure will come

I have watched the game since 1960 , no floodlights, all sort of weather conditions, changing rules monthly,and c--p leadership at both Rovers level and at the top, and I wonder if it will ever truly improve before I am looking at the daisies from below.

Rant over.

3 hours ago, J Phil Loxton said:

Some nice empty seats at Hull yesterday in their meaningless fixture with Huddersfield. IMGs master plan looks like it might be starting to kick in.

The electronic advertising hordings made the game for me. 

4 hours ago, lingaro said:

The electronic advertising hordings made the game for me. 

Bring back the proper score board at the railway end. My only wish in life was to put up the tins with the numbers on. Sadly it ain't going to happen.  Look on the bright side; rovers aren't bottom unlike another team I support!  ( Big clue, it's not Batley - I like Batley tho , especially the corned beef hash) 

1 minute ago, TheYoungBaron said:

Bring back the proper score board at the railway end. My only wish in life was to put up the tins with the numbers on. Sadly it ain't going to happen.  Look on the bright side; rovers aren't bottom unlike another team I support!  ( Big clue, it's not Batley - I like Batley tho , especially the corned beef hash) 

Many many moons ago I was putting the scores up at the PO Rd end ( you went inside that one) at an A team game and put the wrong score up ,the sparse crowd could be heard from the main stand - i soon changed it ☺. 

So we're five games into the Championship season, some eyecatching scores at the weekend and perhaps a picture starting to emerge.

Wakefield are perhaps about what was expected - they are steamrollering most teams like we did last year, which is what you'd expect given their reported spend is close to £1.5 million, but they don't look anywhere near as good at this stage as the 2022 Leigh team. To be honest they're almost an irrelevance to the Championship this year - they'll walk the league leadership title, may or may not win the Grand Final (they probably will but as we well know, one-off play-off games at the end of the year can be unpredictable), but either way, they'll be back in SL next year.

Bradford were just staking a claim to be in pole position for second spot when they did the most Bradford thing and lost to an 0-4 team in York. I think that showed again that 2 or 3 tough, close games in a row against strong opposition can have a knock-on effect - just as we played poorly against Bradford having been in 3 brutal games with Wakefield (twice) and Leigh, Bradford had a number of very tough games, especially the last two, and presumably that told at York (not taking anything away from York who yet again have had a long injury list).

Sheffield have made an impressive start to the season and will probably rack up another big score against Barrow this week, we'll know a lot more about just how good they are when they face Wakefield the week after.

Halifax have a lot of injuries to key players but losing 46-0 at home is still an eyepopping scoreline. Hard to see them being a top 6 team this year unless there's a huge turnaround.

Widnes competed very well against us and their improvement looks genuine at this stage. Interesting to see if they can maintain that form as they have tended to drop away after a prominsing start in previous years.

Toulouse have taken a while to find their form as they sometimes do and clearly aren't the force of 2019 or 2021 but I think they'll still be a top 6 team and probably top 4 as the season progresses.

With some teams (us, Halifax, Toulouse, maybe York and Batley to an extent) not looking as strong as in previous years, it's certainly a harder league to predict from week to week than in previous years, barring Wakefield.