The Phantom Horseman

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.

I don't know if this is a different situation or if the rules have changed, but when Luke Briscoe went on loan to Leeds from us in 2019, we were able to recall him on DR terms. https://www.featherstonerovers.co.uk/news/rhinos-loan-briscoe-oEC7a/ As for the reason for the loan, could be any number of reasons, but maybe related to salary cap? Jordan Abdull is also officially on loan from HKR to Catalans this year but I don't think anyone is expecting him to return to HKR.

One area of difficulty at the moment is the rotation of our middles. I think there have been at least 4 games already this season where one of them has gone off at a fairly early stage with an injury and hasn't been able to return which has meant others picking up the slack. As a knock-on effect, we are now seeing multiple players in that position returning from injury and perhaps lacking a little in game fitness; I thought that for a period in the second half against Widnes we looked like we were struggling for energy defensively in the middle of the park. Another knock-on effect is that Addy has been asked to do huge minutes nearly every week, and at times he has understandably looked to struggle with his workload. He's 33 years old and if he keeps playing 80 minutes he's going to be mentally and physically shot by the second half of the season. To me Tanner looked in need of more minutes on Sunday which was understandable, Bussey is still working his way back, and Massey will be in the same boat. I'm still not sure what our best pack line-up is and I doubt Fordy is either, We're still finding out about Tanner and we haven't seen much of Massey either. With Kamano continuing to look solid, there's probably not much between quite a few of them behind Gadwin (when he's fit).

If they had the opportunity to sign him now (and before the May 1 deadline) why would they not do so given he's out of contract at the end of this season, rather than wait and potentially get involved in a bidding war with other SL clubs?

They want him as a long-term, versatile option for their backs. I'm sure that he'll play plenty of games for them but it might depend on injuries and suspension. With Hiku, Evalds, Burgess, Opacic, Gildart and Hall all fighting for a place in positions 1 to 5, he's not going to be guaranteed a starting place.

"Featherstone Rovers can confirm that they have today concluded a trade with Castleford which sees Corey Hall move to the Tigers and Jack Broadbent to Featherstone". Seriously though, it will be interesting to see if Broadbent is made available on DR (assuming he doesn't get into the HKR squad), otherwise looks like another chance for Gorman.

For me, there are 3 contributory factors to our poor defensive record on our right edge this year, it's not just 1 thing... 1) on occasions our centres and wings have made poor reads and jammed in opening up gaps. That's what happened with the 1st Widnes try, Hall made a poor read coming in to help Bowes with his man and leaving a huge gap for the centre, aided by a great pass from Gilmore. 2) We have got the numbers wrong/not shifted across fast enough on plenty of occasions leaving the centre/winger with little chance. 3) We have played a number of teams whose best half back in terms of creating shape/organising passing moves plays on their left hand side, so against our right. In those terms (ie creating openings and exploiting defensive weakness), Gale is better than Lino, Lilley is better than Davies, and Gilmore is better than Lyons and they all play on the left. No coincidence that I think Wakefield, Bradford and Widnes have all scored a lot more down their left side against other teams as well as us.

My original post edited due to incorrect info! I agree with both comments above, he's very good.

Some eyecatching scores around the league today.Wheels seem to have totally come off at Fax whilst Sheffield continue to fly high, and a good win for York, every time Bradford seem to be showing signs of improvement they revert to type. Doncaster must have put in a massively-improved performance from last week judged on the scoreline at Barrow, sounds like Batley had a proper dig for the first half at least against Wakefield. Exciting game at Fev with both teams mounting stirring fightbacks. Big score for Swinton too.

Gorman, Fishwick and Wallace are all playing for Hull KR reserves today, which would seem to back up the suggestion that they would have been available to us but weren't selected this week.

I agree with all the above but for me the Halifax fella is just a fan with a mike like a lot of club commentators and he doesn't have any agenda, he just got exasperated watching his team getting heavily beaten and reacted like a lot of fans on the terraces would, it was quite amusing to listen to as a neutral but I think most of us can probably relate to how he would have been feeling. Gledhill's a different kettle of fish, he tries to pretend he's a journalist as well as a club commentator but is so obviously biased it's painful, to be fair most reasonable Bradford fans seem to find him a bit embarrassing too.

Well, he used to play half back for Sharlston....think he's played a bit of half back elsewhere but has been more of a hooker in recent years. It would be a very stiff task asking him to come in and play half back for a club whose systems, terminology etc he doesn't know though. When Bowes made the switch to half back for us he would at least know the system, the calls etc from a full pre-season. That's why I reckon Bowes will be back at half back this weekend and probably the 2 following weeks.

Most teams play six middles in their 17 (3 start, 3 off the bench) and we have 8 in our squad who have played that as their main position this year which is a welcome development - Addy, Albert, Bussey, Kamano, Massey, Springer, Tanner and Tennison. We are still a bit in the dark about what to expect from Massey and Tanner this year, but on paper that's a strong group. Assuming the RFL page is correct (it hasn't always been), there's no room for Roberts, or the DR middles Aydin and Fishwick (though Aydin may be playing for HKR tomorrow). Perhaps 1 or 2 of Albert, Massey and Tanner might not be quite ready yet, but otherwise there are some tough decisions for Ford. Switching Bussey to back row in place of England is one option, which would be harsh on England as he's played pretty well, but for me Bussey's a better player than him in either position.

21-man squad has appeared on RFL website. Reynolds not included so presumably playing at Catalans for HKR, or at least flying out. Reiss Butterworth (a hooker), Corey Hall and Leo Tennison included on DR. Presumably Bowes will fill in at half back again given we have called in a 3rd hooker. Massey, Tanner and Albert all in the 21, interesting to see who plays, pretty strong squad on paper (apart from only having one recognised half back).

It was Sam Houghton who sent Roberts off. But I agree with your comment, it's bad enough getting carded for dissent at any time but if you've lost your temper with the ref in the first 5 minutes of a game that's really unprofessional.

Reynolds is in the HKR 21-man squad for their game in Catalans on Saturday evening (as is Aydin), though whether he makes the trip might be another matter. BUT...he's received a 2-game ban for "Grade C Foul and Abusive Language towards the Match Official". Which means he'll be unavailable for Whitehaven away and Halifax at home.

The second half of the Widnes game is worth a watch (Fax have put the full game up on YouTube) for the comedy effect as the Fax commentator tries to make sense of his team conceding try after try, eventually the narrative he decides upon is that Thaler has given Fax nothing, and once he decides that, it's a fun ride for the last 20 minutes or so, there's some Liz Truss-class victimhood going on there. I've noticed a few times before on artificial pitches that one team can take over a game out of the blue, I think Widnes scored on 4 consecutive sets without Halifax touching the ball at one stage, they definitely had a couple of favourable bounces of the ball but also played some good stuff too. They certainly have more shape in attack than we do on the evidence of that game and the concern is that their strength looks to be on the left hand side (where Gilmore plays) as it seems to be for so many of the better Championship teams, certainly Wakefield and Bradford, and we'll need to be better than we have on that side to keep them in check. They have a bit more size in the middle this year having added Kirk and Murray. I think they still have a fair bit to prove and it's early days to suggest they can maintain their current high-flying position as they had a similar start last year. They did win at Bradford though and look sure to pose us much more of a test than Doncaster - I've watched that game back again and if Doncaster play like that regularly they'll be in a relegation battle for sure and I wouldn't be getting carried away with that game because they were pretty dreadful. Hopefully now we are getting some of our forwards back we should be able to get the better of the field position battle. It will be interesting to see if Turner can have a similar impact to last week, that was by some way his best game for us so far and he linked up really well with Brad Day. If he can cause the same problems for the better defences he'll be amongst the best half backs in the division. Presumably Reynolds will be available to us again and he might be with us for a few weeks at least if things go well until Lacans returns. Addy has had a couple of quiet games the last 2 weeks after playing a few stormers so it will be interesting to see if he can bounce back to his early-season form. Hopefully with being on an unbeaten run Widnes will bring a fair few over.

I didn't like to say that, partly because to be honest I don't think Lacans or Springer would be selected either unless several players are unavailable. But the point that three or four of the best French-qualified players in the Championship don't play for Toulouse is a pertinent one.

For the people who are complaining about there being no Toulouse players available, which eligible players in the Toulouse squad do you think should be selected? Marcon and Marion played in the last game against England (the 64-0 defeat) but neither are anywhere near international class really. Maybe Belmas but he's not really up to the standard either. If Championship players are selected you'd think it would be more likely to be players like Cozza or Jouffret.

Along the lines of: "we've had a couple of chats here and there, but I thought he showed a couple of positive signs there, and he's been rewarded for making some good choices and good decisions over the last couple of weeks, hopefully he puts the two together and stays in the team." Basically sounded like Ford was happier with him over the last couple of weeks than he had been previously, always worth remembering we only see what's happening on the field but not at training etc.

To be fair plenty of our fans were saying the same about Bradford last week! I do think when we're assessing our performance we have to take into account how the opponents played, and Doncaster were pretty dreadful yesterday in my opinion, their coach said their completion rate was 50% and if that's correct it's no wonder we were so dominant. I think sometimes there's a "good" time to play certain opponents, I think Bradford got that last week when we had had 3 brutal games against Wakefield (twice) and Leigh, as well as the players missing through injury (which they had too). Doncaster for me played much worse than they did against Wakefield last week, and presumably against Sheffield the week before when they would have beaten the Eagles barring a couple of shocking mistakes from kicks. Still, it was terrific to get such a convincing victory after a pretty shakey start (I thought we were moderate for much of the first half if I'm honest but much better in the 2nd half) and interesting to heard Fordy say there might be more players returning next week - Massey and Tanner perhaps? Ford's interviews are really worth listening to closely as you can tell quite a lot from what he says and the way he says it. For instance the comments on Wynne are quite revealing about why he might not have played much lately but also why he might have earned his place back.

Turner Day Jones

Trylights already up on YouTube

Fev get back on the horse with a wide-margin win at Doncaster. Eight changes from last weekend including returns from injury/suspension for Springer, Day, Bussey and it ended up a fairly comfortable win, though I'm not sure how much we can glean from it as Doncaster were really poor despite having eight ex-Fev players in their line-up. Oustanding performance from Paul Turner who really looked the part today, something positive seemed to happen every time he had the ball and he set up at least 4 tries. Will surely be a much tougher test next week against an in-form Widnes team who thrashed Halifax today.

Am going to hold off with my MOM for now but I'll be surprised if 2 names don't feature in just about every list with one of them a runaway winner.