Dammit. Northern Vs



Leeds

A few people on Twitter stating that there were over 3000 there today. Not had it officially confirmed by either club yet. Great atmosphere. Only negative is the Gibson injury in the first few minutes and Minchella picking up a slight knock according to JK's post-match comments.

Aaron Bower has tweeted the attendance as 2,278

Defence was top from both sides today, especially the Bulls who defended at least 6 repeat sets on their line in the first half. Our first try we didn't deserve and Batley's first try was brainless from our lads. I can't forgive conceding a bargeover try in the opening minutes of a half.



All in all, a very entertaining game today. We need to work on our attacking plays though - I think we looked a bit blunt in stages and lacking a bit of movement. I don't think Milnes and Lilley belong together on today's showing really. Lilley's defence by the way was great.

I agree, both halves did plenty of defensive work which probably sapped a lot of energy whilst we were attacking. It would have been good to have had Chisholm or Keyes come on during the second half to change things up a bit.

What a cracking game today, really enjoyed it. Anyone know how Ashley Gibson is?,it didn't look good with his arm in a sling.

Ah, how I've missed Batley games were the official attendance seems much lower than what it appeared to those in the stadium

Haha, my thoughts exactly.



Batley's 'official' attendances usually come in around 60% of the actual number of people there...

Ah OK!



So you are 1. A professional crowd counter and 2. Calling the Batley club cheats!



For what it's worth, as a spectator who attends Mount Pleasant every match, the published figure looked about right to me!

I seem to remember an incident at Batley not so long ago when the Bulls played there, when people called shenanigans after the attendance was announced, only for the chairman to later come out and say it was something different, blaming the original inaccurate number on the press for wanting a figure before they'd had chance to count.



To be fair, I always thought the attendances at Odsal went the other way. Announcing an official attendance that always seemed higher to me than what I could see. I never quite got the logic of doing that though when presumably you have to declare income from the turnstiles for tax purposes, so assumed I was just bad at estimating.

congratulations on the win

It was a very enjoyable match. No way was it a friendly. It was as tough as any Championship game I’ve seen.



Looking at our performance the main things that stood out for me were as follows. Our defence was superb. We withstood a heck of a lot of pressure on our line and scrambled really well. A couple of times when Batley wingers broke away we had the speed to get back and hold the line too. In attack we were patient and kicked well. It was always going to be close and so it proved. Quite a few times things got heated but we gave as good as we got and didn’t get distracted as we have done in years gone by even if Flanagan ended up in the bin twice.



I thought Lilley grew more influential as the game went on. The halfback partnership with Milnes wasn’t perhaps our best but in the first half they both kicked well and defended well. Milnes was withdrawn in the second half and Wildie moved to halfback with Flanagan as hooker but with Flanagan in the bin for 20mins it meant Lilley had to run things. He did very well considering.



I was impressed with Evans in defence again. He’s a tough bloke. Wildie’s service from dummy half is really good. Crossley looked the part when he came on and Green had a good game too (that was definitely a try under the sticks – I was directly opposite).



Batley were very good too. They will certainly be top half of the division this year. In the forwards they’ve got some big aggressive lads and their offloads caused us problems. Defensively they were very hard to break down and we only managed that a few times. If they have any room for improvement it’s in discipline and just being a bit more clinical when they move the ball.



As for us we play quite a conservative risk free sort of game. It was the right way to play when you consider the result but I think we have more to show in attack. We have a lot of flair on the wings and need to involve them more. I also think we could offload a bit more. I suspect the stats would show us miles behind in offloads.