Bradford in Manchester

Next up the Bulls. We owe them a game after our poor show last time against them. It should be a good game and goo day out in Manchester, it will be interesting to see how Bobby fairs against our pack, would he be able to muscle in when he returns from his loan spell? I do feel if we play to our potential and defend the same way as against Leeds close to our own line then we will restrict Bradford to a low score.

Always a concern for me this magic weekend,a festival type atmosphere,where tough defence can often be sacrificed on the altar of entertainment.

That was the order of the day v Salford last year,a points fest with very little tackling,which suited the City Reds down to the ground,or maybe it was really more down to NB's eccentric coaching.

Anyway there is no team I would rather give a thumping to than Bradford,so I hope we turn up ready to tackle.

I think we will win, as I can't see us taking Bradford too lightly again. They are a much better team than I thought they were going to be, but we have more quality. Bradford also suffer from lack of strength in depth, they will suffer more from the effects of injuries due to lack of bodies to come in. If Bradford turn up on the day I think we will edge it by less than two scores. If Bradford are weaker we are capable of tonking them. Perhaps surprisingly I would rather a closer win in a quality game. We will see.

Giantdee wrote:

I think we will win, as I can't see us taking Bradford too lightly again. They are a much better team than I thought they were going to be, but we have more quality. Bradford also suffer from lack of strength in depth, they will suffer more from the effects of injuries due to lack of bodies to come in. If Bradford turn up on the day I think we will edge it by less than two scores. If Bradford are weaker we are capable of tonking them. Perhaps surprisingly I would rather a closer win in a quality game. We will see.

Bradford are a team i am never confident we will beat for some reason, we have had some decent wins over them and on paper we are a better side, also our league position bears that out, As ever it depends on the day which two teams turn up, Certainly we don't need to turn up for a beating as we did for so many years ( as did others ). They have some dangerous players who will need to be well watched, Sammut and Le strange for two, also a couple of forwards, If our pack can get some go forward i think Broughs kicking can take the stuffing out of them, and hoping Lunts form continues. Should be a good weekend, sadly i won't be there, it will have to be recordings for me.

Where is everyone sitting tomorrow?

Not going,but will be on here during the game if others want to chat about it.

Ponner, ive heard area 104 in unreserved !

I'm trying to get everyone together in that area.
Been a lot if tries scored so far so I can't see a low scoring defensive game from us tomorrow.

Jools wrote:

I'm trying to get everyone together in that area.
Been a lot if tries scored so far so I can't see a low scoring defensive game from us tomorrow.

That's what concerns me a bit about this jamboree,as I said earlier,defence seems to be sacrificed on the altar of entertainment.Suppose as long as we score one more point than them in a high scoring game,all is well.

Hull derby was good to watch,but what a blunder by Ganson.
Greg Eden,dear oh dear,got nowhere near that bomb,but a superb assist for a try earlier.Apparently he's been as inconsistent as ever this season.

Well that was rather straightforward,comprehensive,professional,any adjective you could think of.Very disciplined defence never gave Budfud the slightest chance of making a game of it.Been the feature of the season.

On attack,I still believe we look to hit the front runner too often,in fact we go to first man play just about all the time.Maybe we look a bit of a dour side becaue of that.When we did try a shift it got intercepted,which is maybe because we don't attempt that play often enough.

No question though some well executed set plays close to the ruck,the Robinson blind side switch in evidence again,really has paid dividends.Always going to that the bl**dy camera in the sky was annoying,as the Ferguson try in half two was a great set play,but would have been better appreciated from side on camera.

Shaun Lunt he must be close to being the England hooker,just so efficient now.Suppose he's in comp against McIlorum,who will watch closely now in this next game to compare.

It was nice n easy. Bradford not the same as last time we played them, but we were also so much better. Defence spot on and attack looked slick. Enjoyed the game, don't want to jinks it but top four is looking good.

Some interesting stats given out for this one,Ferguson,40 tackles no less and averaging 9metres per carry.Eorl typical humungous effort,33 tackles 18 carries for 127 metres.Ukuma starting to show us what he can do,17 tackles,16 carries for 126 metres.

Maybe the outstanding stat was that there were 51 tackle busts,shared out between the 17 players on duty.

Dominant display,yet still room for improvement in certain aspects.I wonder if this tough style of football we play,using front runners often to make busts and offload will be enough to get thst elusive trophy,guess time will tell.Of the other teams this weekend I thought Warrington were the most impressive.Still the team to beat imo.

The only disappointment for me was us. We were possibly the worst fans there as we were all spread out and made little noise. I'm sick of reading people slagging us off for support! Numberswise we did well, but needed more vocals...

That was a pretty impressive performance, and from the whole team, If i had to pick out players i would prob mention Lunt Brough Mcgilvrey but to be fair it was a very good team effort, That is the most dominant i have seen our pack all season, not a classic cause it was a bit to one sided for that and nothing like as tough as the cup game against Leeds, but you can only beat what's in front of you and they did that in style. I expect Saints will be a lot harder game than that ,so it's perhaps as well they were so much on top in this game, I'm really looking forward to the Saints game now, It's a pity it's on TV crowd wise and Monday at 8 o'clock is a bad time.

As others have said you can only beat what is in front of you and we did that with some style. We were pretty conservative, in a physically dominant way. I think it could have been easy to play too much Rugby, I liked the discipline just to keep on challenging them up the middle trusting that we would over power them. 5 of our 7 tries came directly from breaks up the middle and another (Ferres) came by putting it wide on the next play.

let us not forget that Bradford are a bit like us last year with only 3 proven props, on Sunday 2 were injured so we faced a front row rotation of 1 established prop (Scruton) 1 novice (Evans) and two bigger back rowers (Langley & Fairbank). Bradford were simply out muscled down the middle, but I did appreciate how ruthless we were.

Yeah,just hitting front runners up the middle was the correct plan in this one,Bfd couldn't live with it.

Our 'go to' set play was well in effect,the one where Robbo stands open,then quickly switches blind behind a decoy angling back towards the ruck.Worked a treat for the second Ferguson try as the Bfd defence parted

They did it twice consecutively leading up to the Grix try,on the second one,I thought Robinson was going to get in the way of Lunt at dummy half,thought to myself what the hell is he doing,but it was a really clever ploy as it meant he did not have to move from open to blind,just went blind at the last split second from directly behind the ruck,then a well executed kick.

Maybe always hitting front runners and then using these set plays around the ruck will be good enough,and we don't need to put on the shift plays,time will tell.

Anderson & Purtill def seem to know what they are doing,can't fault them so far.