Super League Round-up

Super League Round-up

Earlier in the season I posted a blog about the upcoming Super League campaign and, like in my Championship preview and round-up, I raised a few questions that had come to mind ahead of this new campaign.

Overall I think this season has been a great spectacle with plenty of surprises popping up and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the renaissance of teams like Castleford and Leeds, alongside the disappointing opening few weeks that the likes of Widnes and Warrington have had (for any supporters of either of those teams reading this I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense by the way!).  Some of these I’ll expand on later but if the rest of the season continues in the manor this opening quarter has gone I can’t wait to see how the rest of the year pans out.

As I did a couple of weeks ago, I’ll look back and see how my initial thoughts and questions are panning out.

CAN WIGAN RETAIN THEIR TITLE?

I was very positive about Wigan’s chances before the season started and my answer was short and sweet ... “In a word – yes” was what I opened with but now I’m beginning to re-think my answer slightly.

I expanded on that opening comment with the claim that they would sweep all before them and that idea was proving true early on as they had a fantastic opening few weeks.  Despite a couple of bad results I wouldn’t completely renege on that idea either.  Winning their first five games, which included the World Club Championship, was a fantastic start to their season and at that point they were sitting pretty at the top of Super League with maximum points and virtually untouchable.

But the last couple of weeks have seen a dip in form for the Warriors and may have raised a few eyebrows that they’ve gone two consecutive home games without a victory.  The DW Stadium proving that it isn’t a place to be scared of coming to get a result.

I would still agree that they are the favourites for the title despite slipping to fourth in the table but it’s still very early in the campaign and a lot can happen in a few months.

The upcoming Easter period will be interesting and that could be the weekend that defines their future potential as, if they can come through the visit of St Helens and the trip to Wakefield unscathed, then they will be odds on for the title in my eyes.  But, even it doesn’t quite go to plan for them I would never right them off!

TOUGH START FOR PROMOTED LEIGH...

I had some concerns for Leigh, now the closest SL club to where I live, as they had been given an extremely difficult opening few games.  But roll on a few weeks and they have certainly turned a few heads and made more of a stir in the league than I thought possible already this season.  Having played a game more due to their involvement in round five of the Challenge Cup in a few weeks they are sitting pretty in seventh in the table!

Some fans would have been forgiven for thinking the worst after such a heavy defeat to Castleford on the opening weekend but, putting it into perspective against the way the Tigers have started the season, that wasn’t too much of a surprise.

However, three wins from their following three games, including recent consecutive victories over established sides like Warrington and Huddersfield and a narrow defeat to Wakefield, have made the Centurions a real force in Super League and they certainly don’t look out of place in this division.

It wouldn’t come as a major shock if they still up in the Qualifiers come the final phase of the season, as many people will have tipped them to do just that (and I think they would retain their SL place if they did) but on the flip side, going on current form, they would thoroughly deserve a place in the Super 8’s.

We wait and see...

LET’S HAVE A MORE COMPETATIVE SUPER LEAGUE...

So far so good I think!  Early on we have seen plenty of exciting rugby being played and it has been hard to predict the outcome of many of the games.

The emergence of Castleford as a force has been good for the competition and I think they have a genuine shot at finally reaching the Play-offs this year.  Whether they can sustain their form throughout the whole season and overcome a side like Wigan or Leeds, who are both well versed in the unpredictability of the Play-offs, is another matter and that’s a long way off yet.

Some of the results they have thrown up have really impressed me.  Notably the drubbing they handed out to Leeds’ youngsters, a game in which I watched in awe at some of the plays and tries they were scoring, and a decent victory over Catalans last weekend has been impressive to see and hopefully they won’t just fade off into the distance as the season progresses.  Two successive fifth-place finishes shows that they are a consistent side in SL and I think they’re showing enough class and skill to be strong enough to retain their top four place.  Daryl Powell for England?!?!

Another side who have impressed me is Salford Red Devils.  They were unlucky to end up in the Million Pound Game last year following their point’s deduction but this year they have really stepped up a gear.  They’re the only side to have beaten Castleford so far and sit in fifth with eight points from their seven games and have a healthy point’s difference to boot.  Marwan Koukash wanted to make the constantly struggling SL club a strong side within this division and it finally looks like they are going in the right direction.

Leeds Rhinos have picked themselves up this year after a very bad 2016 by their standards.  I predicted them to be strong again this year and so far I have been right.  I think Brian McDermott will be breathing a sigh of relief that his side are back to their usual ways again.

One club that has also surprised me, but for all the wrong reasons, is Warrington Wolves.  The poor Wire just cannot get a break having lost all six of their opening games.  For a team tipped to be challenging for titles this year it looks like their season is already over!  It surprises me as they looked a very strong team when I watched them last season in the Challenge Cup but the injuries to key players seem to have really hit them hard.  They’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do turn their season around but with visits from Hull FC and Leeds coming up they could be heading for a very unwanted record of eight straight defeats.

Both Warrington and Widnes Vikings are trailing the pack already and look to be staring down the barrel of a very long season battling against relegation or an appearance in the MPG.  At the other end it’s looking very healthy with five teams all within two points of each other.  And it looks like it could be a healthy battle in the middle with five teams on either six or five points.  Teams will drop away or come through sticky patches right throughout the campaign but so far it looks to be going very much to plan.

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Road to Wembley - Round Four

Road to Wembley - Round Four

The draw for the fourth round brought up another trip to Bootham Crescent for me as York City Knights had been drawn at home to the now-Championship club Rochdale Hornets.

It was three weeks of eager anticipation since I’d seen the Knights comfortably overcome Egremont Rangers in the previous round and I was looking forward to catching up with one or two old friends from Rochdale having done some reporting work for them last season.

This would be Rochdale’s first foray into this season’s Challenge Cup and having gained promotion to the Championship following a fine victory away to Toulouse in the Promotion Final they have started the 2017 season in good form.  The Hornets reached the fifth round of the competition last season so would come into this game as slight favourites against a York side that had been nilled by Barrow in their opening League 1 game and just sneaked past South Wales the previous weekend.

It was the first time this season where I would venture to the match on my own so it was a long round trip up and down the M62 on a rather quiet Sunday afternoon.  However, my plan of getting to the ground early and finding a parking space didn’t quite go to plan as, in typical football/rugby ground-in-the-middle-of-a-housing-estate style, I ended up having to squeeze into an empty spot a few blocks away and walking back to the ground.  I did ask a steward about parking but my only other option seemed to driving about half a mile back to the hospital, paying £2 for the privilege of parking there, then walking all the way back so I was pretty pleased when I eventually found the space I did.

I still made it in good time though and was able to buy a match programme (which was considerably more substantial than last time than the previous round’s) and bought a half-time draw ticket for a total of £3 pounds.  To be honest I didn’t hear what number had been drawn out so I could be sat at home writing this with a wad of cash somewhere in York with my name on it!  I seriously doubt it was mine - I’m not that lucky - but if anyone was there and remembers if it wasn’t claimed my ticket number is 0623, so please do let me know.

As the teams were warming up I had a brief catch-up with Luke Harrison, a director of Rochdale who I knew from my time at Spotland last season, and was able to take a spot near the half way line again.

The match got underway and it turned out to be much more eventful than I thought it would be.  The York players were clearly up for this game against higher league opposition and seemed to have a point to prove to their fans after an indifferent start to the campaign.

So much so that they raced into a surprise 14-0 lead inside the first 20 minutes during which time Rochdale were barely out of their own half.  The tone was set when a Hornets man dropped an easy ball in front of his own line right from the kick-off to hand York head-and-feed of the scrum just 10 yards out and the Knights took their early chances well.

Two converted tries and a penalty were registered before Rochdale finally realised they were actually playing a game.  I was texting my dad before the game joking whether the York kicker Harry Tyson-Wilson would be able to convert any of his kicks this week as it took him seven attempts to score with his boot in the previous round.  I was clearly eating my words at full time as he’d go on to nail all of his kicks.

Two quick converted tries in a five minute spell brought the game, and the crowd around me, to life as the score was poised at 14-12 with less than ten minutes of the half remaining.  I was led to believe that the referee was having a bad game and didn’t know what the hell he was doing.  At least that was what the few hundred York supporters in the stand were regularly confirming with the use of some loud and tasty language!  Deja vu struck hard when it felt like I had been in this atmosphere before – oh wait, I had!

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the half was the comical, but accurate, blow-by-blow commentary from the group of elderly gentlemen sat next to me who liked to discuss all aspects of both codes of rugby and had clearly been coming to watch York for the past 40 or so years.

The crowd were much more pleased by half time as York had managed to sneak in another six points to lead 20-12.

I was starting to feel parched so took the opportunity at the half time break to venture down to the nearest food and drink kiosk which turned out to be the clubhouse bar.  I waited in the queue and got my £1.60 ready as it stated on the board for my pint of orange cordial and lemonade and nearly choked on my first sip when the bar lady charged me £3.20!  I staggered back to my seat and was left think that I may as well have bought a proper pint for that price.

As I sat back down preciously holding the most expensive fizzy soft drink I think I’ve ever bought the game was back underway.  In my head Rochdale were going to pull themselves together and turn this game around, but York are not their bogey team for nothing.  York had beaten the Hornets in all three meetings last season and they were about to make it a fourth in a row.

Rochdale did pull the scores back level with 20 minutes remaining in a great second half for any neutrals watching and I could hear the nerves jangling all around me.  But it was to be York’s day as the Tyson-Wilson brothers had the last say thanks to Bobby’s try and Harry’s conversion which produced a six-point margin which Rochdale wouldn’t come back from.

The ref blew the final whistle and the York fans were ecstatically congratulating their players whilst I stood back in the stand clapping both sides off the pitch after what was in fairness a very good cup tie.

I left the ground feeling that this victory could well kick-start York’s season and see them push on for a place in the play-offs at the end of the year.  And with that passionate home crowd behind them every game they probably won’t be far off.

I now look forward to seeing where my ‘Road to Wembley’ takes me next.  Will it be a third consecutive trip to Bootham Crescent or will the draw be kinder and give me a tie a bit closer to home?

If you like what you read you can follow me on Twitter at @TheRLBlogger.

Championship Round-up

Championship Round-up

At the start of the season you may remember I posted my preview to this season’s Championship campaign where I asked a few questions that I felt were important as we headed into a new season.

The main two were around whether Hull KR could bounce straight back into Super League at the first time of asking and could Bradford Bulls survive after a torrid pre-season?

The final question I asked myself was what the prospects were for the other ten teams in the division?  Who would be pushing for the top four and who would be looking to avoid the drop to League 1?

We’re now a quarter of the way through the regular season after this weekend’s round six results so I wanted to take the chance to look back and see how my questions were panning out so far.

WILL HULL KR BOUNCE BACK?

As expected the Robins are storming their matches so far and are setting the benchmark at the top of the table after their six games and looking good for a direct return to Super League.  Opening round victories over Bradford Bulls and London Broncos, who I predicted their main challengers to the League Leaders Shield would be, settled any pre-season nerves as to how they would fare this year.

They followed that up with a narrow win by ten over Rochdale Hornets and trounced Oldham 48-0 in round four.  Two more big victories over Sheffield Eagles and Dewsbury Rams have seen them rack-up an impressive ‘point’s for’ total of 256 with only 80 points conceded.

The result of all this is that the Robins are already two points clear at the summit with their main challengers, the Broncos, three places and four points behind them.  Attendances have also been promising for the East Hull club with spectators at home games regularly tipping the 6-7,000 mark.

Coming up next for KR is a comfortable home Challenge Cup tie against Sheffield followed by two more home games in the league against Halifax and Batley Bulldogs.  Halifax may prove the trickier of those two ties after their impressive home victory over London Broncos at the weekend but home advantage should make it plain sailing for the league-leaders.

CAN THE BULLS SURVIVE?

Bradford fans should be delighted with the way their new team has started the season and are already half way to wiping clean their points deduction.  Three wins from their opening six games puts them on -6 points after a quarter of the way through this regular season and if they didn’t have that deduction they would be sitting in eighth place.

It didn’t look promising for the Bulls at first though with defeats in their first two games, but great victories over Swinton Lions, Toulouse Olympique and Batley last weekend have seen them give hope to their loyal fans that they might just pull off survival in the Championship.

Their next matches see them take on Dewsbury Rams, Oldham and Sheffield, who are all struggling, so I reckon they could quickly be back to zero points fairly soon.  And that leaves them with plenty of games left to get the required points total, roughly 14, to avoid the drop.

WHAT NOW FOR THE OTHER CLUBS?

It already looks like it’s going to be a real battle for the final three top four places to qualify for the Qualifiers when the league splits.

Featherstone Rovers are the team in second with five wins from their first six games.  The only blot on their sheet was a very narrow surprise defeat at home to promoted side Rochdale Hornets.  For me they already look odds on to seal a spot in the Qualifiers and their next league game against Toulouse looks like it will be a cracker of a game!

I predicted in my preview that Toulouse would also be a force this year.  So far they are looking good with four wins and are unbeaten on home soil.  Their next game though will be a real tester and if they can get a result away to Featherstone then they will move up to second and prove a point to some fans and punters who didn’t think they would be able to push for the top four.

London Broncos are fourth with as many victories but, other than a 42-12 drubbing of the Bulls two weeks ago, they haven’t had it all their own way as they could only beat Swinton by three points and Oldham by two.  Their other victory came away to struggling Dewsbury but even that was only by 14 points.

Elsewhere in the division Rochdale are by far the surprise package of the season as their fifth place standing comes courtesy of three victories over Dewsbury, Bradford and Featherstone and a draw with local rivals Oldham.  They even topped the table after the opening two rounds!

Halifax and Batley have struggled early on by their recent standards and both have to play Hull KR in the next few weeks so they’ll need to really up their game if they want to push further up the table.

At the wrong end of the table Oldham have three points and their next three games do not look particularly favourable – trips to Batley and Toulouse either side of a home match with the resurgent Bradford.  Sheffield and Swinton are both struggling with just one victory each and looks like they could both be sucked into a relegation battle during the remainder of the season alongside Dewsbury.  Maybe Sheffield’s pre-season struggles were bigger than I thought as I were tipping them to be pushing for a place in the Qualifiers.

The Rams are having a nightmare of a season and only have the Bulls’ point’s deduction to thank for keeping them off the bottom of the table with five defeats from as many games.

If you like what you read you can follow all my blogs on Twitter through @TheRLBlogger.

Amateur Focus - Part 1

Amateur Focus

The National Conference League got underway over the weekend with 19 fixtures scheduled to be played from three of the four leagues on Saturday.  Unfortunately three of the games across Division 2 and 3 succumbed to the wonderful British weather and the big game in the Premier Division, Pilkington Recs v Siddal, was abandoned after 25 minutes due to a serious injury.

Of all the games I have seen involving NCL sides over the past 14 months or so in my Challenge Cup journies I’ve been mightily impressed with the standard and intensity of the matches.  Most people would agree that most, if not all, of them would easily be comfortable playing in League 1 if they ever wanted to progress and I sometimes found myself wondering why the RFL don’t pump more money into this level of the sport in order to help those standards progress even further.  However, that’s another blog for another time.

I wanted to write a blog focusing on just the amateur level of rugby league as it’s not often shouted about within the mainstream media.  The BBC have rightly given the community clubs some much needed national coverage with their fantastic idea of showing one of the matches from each of the early rounds of the Challenge Cup and because of that, many people got to witness last season’s champions Siddal take on the League 1 new boys Toronto Wolfpack in the latest round.  Long may this continue!

This first blog is about the results from the opening weekend of the new season.  Some of the results stood out and impressed me but I also wanted to see how the teams that I’ve followed in the last couple of years have started the new campaign.

PREMIER DIVISION

Two sides that I’ve watched a few times over the past couple of years met at Twist Lane on Saturday afternoon.  Leigh Miners Rangers were playing host to Kells of West Cumbria in a game which I would have liked to have gone too but couldn’t for other commitments.  Kells won the game 56-12!  This was a huge surprise to me as I thought the Miners would have wanted to get their early cup exit out of their minds and start the season strong.  Kells, therefore, are the early pace-setters at the top of the table.

Kells just missed out on the Play-offs last season and the two sides promoted from Division One, Myton Warriors and Thatto Heath Crusaders are behind them in second and third respectively.  The Warriors overcame another West Cumbrian side in Egremont Rangers, who I’ve watched a couple of times this year, by a score of 34-8, and the Crusaders won 22-6 over in Hull against Skirlaugh.

Two other sides that I’ve visited at various points this season met each other and it was Rochdale Mayfield, who I saw play Barrow Raiders in the League 1 Cup not too long ago, win 30-16 at home to Wigan St Patricks, who overcame Leigh Miners in the first round of the Challenge Cup back in January.

The final victory of the opening day went to Wath Brown Hornets who narrowly beat West Hull, who finished second behind Siddal in the final table last season, 18-12.

DIVISION 2

Another Cumbrian side finished the day as leaders of Division Two after the first round of fixtures as, in a rematch of one of last season’s Play-off Semi Finals, Askam nilled Leigh East by 38 points at the Leigh Sports Village.  Askam then went on to lose the Final hence remain in Division Two as one of the fancied teams for 2017.

Close behind in second is the other side who lost in last season’s Play-off Semi Finals, Thornhill Trojans who came out on top by 34-4 against Wigan St Judes.  And behind them in third are last season’s Division Three champions, Crosfields, who enjoyed a marvellous 34-10 victory in Cumbria against Millom, who were relegated from Division 1.

In a match between two other relegated sides, a derby between Oulton Raiders and East Leeds saw the visitors from the big city come away with a comfortable 31-18 victory.  The final victory of the day went to Bradford Dudley Hill who took on Salford City Roosters in Eccles and travelled home 18-14 winners.

The match at Drighlington, promoted as Division 3 Play-off winners, who should have played host to Saddleworth Rangers was postponed due to the bad weather.

DIVISION 3

New boys Barrow Island couldn’t quite make it three Cumbrian sides at the top of each division after their comfortable 40-12 victory over Elland, who were relegated two divisions at the end of last season after finishing bottom of Division One.  That honour fell to Dewsbury Moor Maroons who came home from Stanningley with an emphatic 42-0 drubbing on the side relegated from Division 2.

It’s another of the new boys that sit in third place, level on point’s difference with Barrow Island.  Clock Face Miners enjoyed a fantastic 32-4 victory over Stanley Rangers – a side that were also relegated from Division 2 last year.  This game was deemed to be a tough tie for the side who joined from the North West Men’s League but they made light work of their opponents to claim a memorable first ever win in the NCL.

Elsewhere in the division Dewsbury Celtic, again relegated from Division 2, and the final new club to the NCL this year, West Bowling, both scored 22 points in their first home games of the season but were unable to avoid defeats to Waterhead Warriors (to 40) and Eastmoor Dragons (to 38) respectively.

The two matches between Oldham St Annes and Woolston Rovers and Rylands Sharks and Gateshead Storm were called off due to the weather.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to following how all four divisions pan out this season and will look to post more blogs on the amateur game throughout the year.

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