Wakefield friendly

Matt

Good job this one means nothing. Let them have the friendly bragging rights before the season starts, hopefully the only time they’ll have it this year.

Maturecasfan

Matt

Doubt it.
Gonna be a long sea
So much for all this optimism around pre season.
How hard the boys have worked.
How we have a good defence coach lol. Everything rosy in the garden, until, we step on the field.
2 props asap, or we are done.

TheFirm

Got a feeling it will be a long season. Wakefield were streets ahead of us.

Hepworth

Give the opposition position and territory and you’ll get beat,too many errors and too many penalties and it’s an uphill struggle. Wakey clearly
played some nice stuff,like most Powell teams they hit the ground running early but evidence suggests they also fade as the season progresses. As for us a lot of work needed and quickly.

orrsome

We definitely looked undercooked and not ready for a Wakefield team who were far more up for it than we were. Last night should be a wake up call for both the players and coaching staff.

Having said that there are some worrying signs:

Our forwards are obviously not big enough or aggressive enough. This is the biggest problem and I can’t see what can be done about it at this stage.
Cini looks to be very poor in defence - is he a centre?
The decision to have Westerman filling in at half back was stupid and can’t be the way we’re going to cope with injuries. Putting square pegs in round holes - again!!

Let’s be clear, Wakefield is nowhere near the best team we will face this season so if we don’t learn our lessons very quickly, there are some heavy defeats coming and it’s going to be a long, long season.

Hepworth

orrsome Have to agree, big mistake playing Joe in the halves,Cini had a mare and we need to find a kicker cos it’s not Hoy. Young or not Windley should be getting time in these games even in the cup. We looked way behind Wakey at this time,though I’d say we have more improvement in us than they do. Baptism of fire for the Pacific Islanders in terms of level and weather,hopefully they’ll learn quick and adapt. Front row a major worry. I’d give Matveyev a good run prior to the first league game but even then we need to find a prop somewhere.

stuey

Hammered by probably a mid-table at best team. Unless we improve massively, we are going to take some seriously heavy beatings this season.

RaoulDuke

I don’t read much into these matches a big win would mean nothing, as it would be if it were a loss.

DP looks to have brought a team together and having played last season winning time after time, he’ll try to keep up momentum.

One thing to note is he makes a team go from the start of the league when many others aim to get ready for the later matches and playoffs. I’m hoping that’s us. But we need wind on the board early.

pirate

First outing in a friendly
Westy in the halves
I dont think DM took this run out too seriously
I am still cautiously optimistic (like every season)
New coach, new spine. start complaining five games in if nothing improves

CTID

TheFirm

pirate He picked a full strength team, he very much took it seriously which is further backed up by his post match comments. We were miles off and this close to the start of the season that is worrying.

Hepworth

Hilights on YouTube if anyone is feeling massochistic.

FlatCapper

It’s always difficult to make an accurate assessment of a team based on a single, friendly, game. The scoreline doesn’t always reffelct the game as a whole.

However, from the reports I’ve seen/heard from those that went, serious questions were raised about how well Cas worked as a team.

Hopefully we’ll see an improvement in the next game but pressure will mount if it’s another blow out.

Hepworth

FlatCapper Having seen the whole game,I can only say the result was an accurate reflection of both teams performance. Wakefield flew out the blocks and we looked shell shocked for the first 20 minutes. They ran lines our defence especially on the flanks couldn’t handle,whatever measure you could use to judge they were ahead on all of them,thankfully they bombed a couple of tries or it could have been worse. Middle of the first half we seemed to make a better fist of it but last five minutes we defended like turnstiles. Couldn’t read anything into the second half too many changes but Windley was a rare bright spot. Wakey looked primed and ready to go from the off but we looked way off that. A couple of weeks could make a huge difference especially to our imports and our playing systems,it’s certainly needed. But it’s not inconceivable given the amount of time the squad had had together significant improvements can be made,question is how much?

RaoulDuke

I heard that Cini played left centre when I’ve seen him play on the right in his highlight reel. That was odd but then again they didn’t maybe want a new second row in simbiken and him. However we were hot with Mellor, wood and senior on the left.

I how we revert for the hull match

Hepworth

I know it’s early for Cini and he was on his least favoured side but Simms and Wood look our best centres at the moment. Disappointed that Maguire would rather put square pegs in round holes rather than play Windley if that’s the case and Milnes is out for a while maybe we could bring in Hampshire on a short term deal.

Hepworth

Maguire appears to be persisting with his theme,says Rimbu will move into the halves for the Hull game. I suppose if you’re going to experiment now’s the time.

RaoulDuke

Warm up matches are the time to try things but I’m a square peg in a square hole person and would prefer a proper half in. But in saying that Rimbu has played there and might be the short term answer. We’ll find out on a few hours, really looking forward to it.

Hepworth

Nice long drive home to digest the latest performance. It was without doubt better than last week,a few straws to grasp hold of. First half was more encouraging for me,we really struggled in attack second half against a team that had removed their better players. Cini was much better than last week,Rimbu average in the halves but better when he reverted to where he belongs. It’s sort of like you could see what we were trying to do it just wasn’t quite happening. Had it been a
a league game we’d have been bemoaning a couple of decisions that went against us,and a couple of high shots might have earned a yellow,couple of times we’d have taken the two rather than run it and the scoreline would have been more reflective of the game which unlike the Wakefield game we were always in. Still a lot to do on the training pitch but if the improvement continues I’d be confident going to Bradford. Even more so if we had a bit more grunt up front.

TheFirm

Unless we sort the forwards we are finishing bottom. Overall they just aren’t good enough and without that platform we will go nowhere.

RaoulDuke

I went yesterday and was still surprised Cini was on the left rather than right but he didn’t look bad.

We lost to a couple of squirms over the line from the play of the ball. They were both at the railway end and i couldn’t see who made the mistakes but they were on our left about where the prop and left second row should be.

We put the ball down over the line twice in the second half and they were called no tries incorrectly but hey-ho, we should have been out of sight by then.

The team made quite a few try scoring breaks which ended in either the player not passing to support or a poor pass. Hoy, Cini, wood, that’s 3 there which should have been scored. So just a bit of rusty play hopefully.

We handled their big forwards well in general but size was a factor. Also we could do with telling our props to do their basic jobs and stop trying to be ball players. Too many times they offloaded rather than running hard. Very frustrating.

Westerman was very much a ball playing 13 and I don’t know if that’s because Rimbu was basically shovelling the ball on and not running his left side as a halfback.

Defence really good in most parts, no issues on either sides just 2 moments of lost concentration cost us.