Oh dear, what a shambles?

Well it’s hard to say much else really, for on Saturday we probably squandered the best chance we will have of getting a home draw in the play-offs, in a league that is probably as poor as it will ever get.

It was a massive game that we should have been so up for, but again we looked disinterested and this season is quickly descending into the one that got away! It will never be easier for a workmanlike team, that is just a bit consistent, to get to Old Trafford, but the last few weeks have proved that we are neither workmanlike nor consistent. Wigan on Friday night really, really wanted it, yet with us, to have so much to play for and yet to not turn up for long periods of the game, is simply criminal for me.

We were clueless at times and people won’t pay to see what we all sat through on Saturday much longer, for our 2019 home form is now verging on a disaster. This was our most inept performance since we played Huddersfield in the Magic Weekend jamboree, if not, perhaps, our poorest of the season. The tragedy is that Salford although adequate and disciplined in their execution of a simple game plan, were not that good either.

They were brilliantly led from scrum half by Hastings, but otherwise 5 of their scores came from us either making mistakes in our own 20-meter area or from us giving penalties away in the same zone. But, some of our lot appeared to be simply going through the motions, they’ll deny it and perhaps I’m being a bit harsh here, however, in the end that’s how it looked to the scores of people who were streaming out of the ground with 10 minutes to go.

Last week in the build-up to the game we knew it was a massive chance to go 2 points clear in second, surely you have to want that? Surely that must motivate you to at least give your all? Surely it’s your, defining moment of the season so far? Well we mere mortals might all have thought that, but from a shambolic looking warm up to the final hooter, some of our lot simply lacked any sort of wanting or passion at all.

I love my club and I can take defeat, I can take humiliation and even disastrous outcomes and do it with pride, but only if I’m convinced everyone is giving their all for me; on Saturday I’m convinced a lot didn’t!!! It’s simply in the end all about playing for the FC, for the shirt, the badge and the fans, yet I saw precious little of that on show at all. In fact, in the end, Salford came out worthy winners. I’d like to say it was heart-breaking, but for this season at least, I think I’m past that now!

It’s never an easy ride as an FC fan is it?

First thoughts from the game at Wakefield? Well I think I had just two at the end; firstly, we’ll never play a worse team than the Wildcats and playing like we are at present, we will never get to a Grand Final, never mind win one.

So come on FC; 4 games to go ……prove me wrong!

For me as a spectacle Sunday was instantly forgettable. It was always going to be a battle and Wakefield is hardly a happy hunting ground, but it was hardly convincing either, yet there everyone was as the hooter went, breathing a little easier after a real ‘mistakeathon’, yet two points clear of Wigan again and level with Warrington in second. Who wouldn’t have taken that back in February eh? We have seen some real dross at times in 2019 and it was the same again in West Yorkshire on Sunday. None the less, in the context of the season, it was a massive win, we are back on the horse points wise, but not exactly galloping towards the Grand Final either.

BUT!!!! If Wigan beat Warrington on Friday and we beat Salford on Saturday, we go clear in second!!!! Crazy times eh??? I never like doing the Dobbins a favour, but we’ve given them a leg up and if our noisy neighbours can’t beat that lot at home next Sunday, they don’t deserve to stay up!! Poor old Wakey were clueless at times, but although we had a lot more idea than them, we just made mistake after mistake. Yet it’s certainly all happening and it’s never dull at the FC is it? It’s been another interesting week signing wise, what’s more, injuries and our current form makes next Saturdays hit up with Salford at the KCom a critical yet difficult looking affair to say the least. They are for me, the form team of the competition at present. What’s more, I bet with our injury situation they’ll smell blood!!

Well that was closer than most of us thought it would ever be, wasn’t it? 

Again, I can’t be downbeat this week, particularly after all that effort and fighting spirit coming as it did, just 5 days after pretty much the same group of players had their hearts broken and their bodies battered, in such tragic circumstances in the Semi-Final. However, looking at it all objectively, we must learn quickly to be smarter and turn pressure into points.  

I didn’t really know what to expect on Thursday although I did feel that we had little chance of really competing after a five-day turn-around following that battle royal in Bolton;particularly as we faced a team that had experienced two weeks with their feet up. 

However, in the end we did show incredible energy and resolve to hang in a game that we almost came out winning. Sadly, once again after all that resolute line defence and tons of heart and spirit against all the odds, our attack was clunky and disjointed and our frustration at this was summed up perfectly by what a lady said to me, (as she passed to grab an early cup of tea as half time approached) “I won’t be missing much, if we play till midnight we won’t score!”. And that was exactly how it looked to me.  

Our defence, like Wigan’s was magnificent, but theLancashire team were there for the taking. We simply lacked any sort of plan from Kelly and Connor and with Sneyd well watched and flattened a time or two, we didn’t have enoughguile or enterprise to score more than the one try we got from Taylor. So Wigan probably deserved the points, but it was a good effort from the boys, if not as I say, a bit of a dumb one at times.

After the weekend our destiny is still in our own hands, nothing has changed, we are still third, all be it with a shrinking gap between us and Wigan, but they have four home games in the five remaining, whilst we have three; BUT they are good at home and we are better away, so it’s going to be a real battle to hold onto our position here on in! 

Therefore, with a long turn around coming up, we simply have to get recharged, practise our moves all day long, switch our centres around and get our attack sorted out, for we really do have to win at Wakey next Sunday. 

“In the end it’s the hope that kills you ….the beautiful, horrible hope!”

Hope eh? On Saturday we turned up full of it. We battled to the last man, we gave everything and yet in the end just came up short to lose our first Challenge Cup semi-final in 19 years. In such circumstances the fans can ask for no more than 100% effort and wanting, but then, when all that has been put in by both sides, as I said last week, the outcome in such games will always be in the lap of the gods!

Man it was a tough defeat to take though!! But on this occasion as a Hull fan in the end the best team won, and it’s hard to argue otherwise really.

To score three tries from our mistakes, with our two coming from well-engineered pieces of play says a lot, but of course, the ‘experts’ would retort that we shouldn’t have made those blunders in the first place. We didn’t make many individual errors but the ones we did make led invariably to tries. Warrington made a few too, but the gods smiled on them and they got out of jail. When all came to all, two great kicks from Austin did for us, yet we still had our chances. But, as the rained poured down and the ball was difficult to handle, those simple twists of fate that sometimes you can’t control, saw the scales of destiny tip toward the Cheshire Club and at the final hooter they deserved their win and it was the FC that came out second best!

But, only just and in what was a titanic battle we never gave up and we never gave in.

We fought for each other and played as a team and when that final try went in, our players were, to a man, visibly distressed with some virtually inconsolable. At the end the players were just distraught and once their statutory TV commitments were met, no one from the 17 could speak to the local media afterwards. They were hurting as much as we were, so you won’t be seeing much complaint from this fan in here this week, for that effort and passion was all I could ever ask for!

I just hope that somehow from somewhere, we can find a deal of spirit again by next Thursday, but if the lads can’t, I won’t be too surprised, for it will be a while after Thursday, before I get over my afternoon in the rain at Bolton.

It’s always hard to lose in such circumstances, someone always has to, but none of us find it that easy to handle when its us!   

4,300 odd days of waiting!!!

How good was that victory at Headingley eh? Not just for us getting another two valuable league points but in the context of our build up to next weekend and the rest of the campaign?

Everyone played their part, but it was Marc Sneyd who for me took the accolades, as Ellis steadied the ship and Houghton tackled and ran brilliantly. Yeh, Leeds are bottom, yeh, they are poor, in fact from what I’ve seen in the games this weekend, it is only the poorness of the teams around them, that is given the ‘Lacklustre Loiners’ any sort of hope at all.

However, it was the dynamics of it all that was so pleasing, for to go so far in front of them, then lose the lead and the momentum, before we had to not only take on their players but the crowd as well, was one thing, but then we grabbed the initiative again and fought backs to the wall to hold that two-point advantage until the end; that was something else.

The in and out stuff was still there, but not as much as it has been, although we did still give away far too many stupid penalties which in turn gave the home side both heart and field position, but we battled our way back into it, we showed passion and fight and a steady hand in difficult times, plus we held our nerve and as the only Cup semi-finalists to win this weekend, we looked an accomplished team and that’s all that we can ask for really.

So for me, it was above all else a really heartening victory in the context of the season.     

Despite all that however, it’s back to reality and make no mistake about it we are going to be up against it again in Bolton, of that there is little doubt!

I think we showed at Headingley that we have the fight and the players to get us back to the capital, but we have to go into that game again scrapping for our lives. We might be slight under dogs and the Wire certainly have a few scores to settle from 2016, but it’s that sort of adversity that defines exactly what you are as a player and it’s the stuff that fashions the culture within a team. A deep instinctive desire to win, (like we saw on Sunday), that doesn’t fade in adversity, despite the odds or the situation, is what saw us prevail in 2016 and 2017 and that’s where we need to be again next Saturday.

On the terraces and out on the field we all have one ambition and that is to win, but in such games it is hard and sometimes the decisions of the few or even the individual, will dictate the outcome. We’ll certainly be up for it as fans and we just have to hope that once again the fighting spirit of the famous Hull FC prevails, it’s a real watershed game in our season and something, we’ve been told, that we have been building for all year; we’d better turn up for this one then!

“When I’m good I’m very, very good and when I’m bad I’m awful

Violet Elizabeth – (Just William)

So it is with my team at present and although that second half didn’t exactly make me ‘scream and scream till I’m sick’ it was still hard to watch, although as a game, perhaps it was simply a microcosm of our season to date. I guess I could have headed this edition up with ‘4 seasons in one day’, because in that first half we saw the return of the flowing power rugby of 2016 followed by the gritty determined defence of 2017, whilst in the second we saw the reticence and disinterest of 2018 and the unpredictable, inconsistency of this year. 

Whatever else we are this season, my team, Hull FC, are bloody frustrating at times!!

It was certainly a game of two halves!!! Just as it has been a season of literally watching two mirrored FC teams and it’s the constant worrying about which team will turn up on any given weekend, that’s the really frustrating thing. So, move over ‘Fringe’ and ‘Stranger Things’ because if you really want to know what it’s like to be exposed to an alternate universe, just talk to any committed FC supporter in 2019!

Although that almost schizophrenic demeanour has been our lot all season and indeed something that has frustrated this fan to hell, talking to a younger supporter at the end of the game perhaps, I thought, I worry too much? Perhaps we should all just accept it?  Let’s face it as he sagely pointed out, fans at London, Leeds and Rovers would grab the chance to be so in-consistent that they were two points up in third, clear of relegation with 7 rounds to go and in a Cup semi-final, but somehow when your witnessing it that doesn’t make this ‘upside-down’ season any less frustrating does it? 

We’d been up and down from game to game, but then we won 4 in a row and looked really good taking on Castleford and Catalan away from home, before against the Dobbins and then Saints we were back to being scratchy to say the least. This week we surpassed ourselves and managed to mirror that season long malaise in one game. Shining in the first half and flopping and floundering in the second.

But, you have to be pleased with our overall position for it is something that would have been taken by all of us when we set off with two loses on the trot back in February, but it was tough going last Thursday in that second half.

None the less in the end the record shows that we won, we were thoroughly entertained in the first half and suffered whatever is the opposite to that in the second, but we got two points and we are still third. However, there are much bigger battles ahead and we will have to be a lot better in them!!

The infuriating thing is of course, that we know that is eminently possible when this lot really set their stall out to play for 80 minutes.    

Out play, out thought and out manoeuvred!!! In fact, on Friday we were simply outclassed!!

Again, just when we needed to see a strong performance to lay down a marker against what is undoubtedly the best team in the competition by a country mile, we came up well short. We were just out muscled and out thought from the first minute and that by a team who had class and ability across the board. Everyone could off load, everyone could make play and as for their defence, well it left ours standing. Three tries including two rather fortuitous efforts in the first 20 minutes, saw us 18-0 down and already without a hope of getting back into it.

Our pack just couldn’t live with theirs and so our halves had no chance, nor had our backs as we were given a lesson on just how good you have to be, if you are ever to be run away leaders of the competition.

So no excuses and no attempts at an explanation, because we were just second best right across the board. We have now to focus on next Thursday and see if we can get two points against the basement dwellers from the capitol, because if we can’t, then with Wigan racing up on the rails, we can probably wave goodbye to a top three finish. Our only hope then is that with all the rest playing each other in the next seven rounds, we can sneak into that top five. However, with our away form so good and our home form so poor, with 5 home games out of the remaining 8 at the KCom, it doesn’t look good does it?

How can a team that demolished Catalans so convincingly turn around just 5 days later and play like that? Well for me the answer to that one is the 5-day turnaround bit and perhaps little else and believe me, Rovers were lucky to catch us on it!

Lee Radford’s last words on the Derby before kick-off were that, ‘Want and Desire are the key’. We had neither really, but where you surprised? I hate to be the clever bugger and as you know I always back my team against anyone, but in here last week I did fear the worst and in the end it was just a game too far after that match in France with the travel and the heat and the euphoria of that success. Plus, we were perhaps a bit too confident in the build-up!

I hate the place and I’m glad I didn’t go! All that said Thursday was disappointing. Being beaten by the great unwashed always is, but for me it was a scrappy game in which we had to play backs to the wall rugby, were lacking in energy and made far too many silly errors. Getting beaten by that lot is always a bummer and of course predictably, the way some of their fans reacted you would have thought they’d won the cup final. However, I guess that’s just what it was for them, as they have nothing to play for but their survival. Like all tired teams we forced it too much, were too lateral, made too many errors and panicked, to such an extent that a better team would have had us, big style. Looking back on it we are probably lucky that Rovers aren’t a better team!

So many folks had a go at me last week for my predictions in here. But I sort of knew what was at stake for both sets of players. Getting two points when you are rested up and in danger of losing your job, against two points to get a bit closer to the team in second place and doing it after everything we had been through 5 days earlier in France, always, for me, offered too much of a bias towards the Dobbins.

It’s a set-back but not a major one! We are still third, we still have 24 points and now have 9 games to keep that position in the much coveted top three. That ranking is ours to lose and the battle starts on Friday at The KCom against the Saints, who are far and away the best team in the competition!

That was Absolutely Sensational!!!

Could you believe some of that rugby … because I couldn’t!!!

For a bloke who is 69 this week, I find that you get to a point when you don’t believe that anything can surprise you anymore. But, in the life of a sports fan there are very occasionally, times when you are just lost for words, when your team is just so good that is hard to believe that (in this case), it’s the same group of players that got absolutely mullered at home by Warrington not so long ago. The fact is I think, that when this team really has their ‘heads on’ and move the ball around they are nothing short of glorious to watch.

Griffin, who was named in the pack, played a traditional wide running second rowers role and was almost unplayable and a real back-row forward for the future. Connor when he injected himself into the game was mesmerising and in Ratu, who we were reminded is eligible for GB, we have a finisher as good as anything you will see in this country. His try, which was recorded as a 105-meter effort, was just amazing. [PA1] 

But on the day it was another real team effort, Sneyd again controlled things and kicked impeccably both from the Tee and in play, while up front we took on and eventually overcame one of the biggest packs in the competition. Taylor, Green, Manu, Paea and the visibly improving Bowden worked so hard down the middle, Houghton provided the service and Griffin, Savelio and Westerman just ground it out!! By the end, the much vaunted and pretty hefty Catalan pack were visibly blowing for a tug!!

It was a game that under the circumstances (the heat, the travel and the opposition smarting from that London reversal last week) was a big ask for the FC, but a great chance to go 4 points clear in third, 6 points clear of 6^th and put a massive 12 points between us and the relegation place held by the hapless Dobbins at the bottom. I doubted we could do it, because usually in such situation Hull FC just don’t do it, but we took that big chance, in quite ‘un-Hull like fashion.

I say that because for a team that have been so unpredictable, to the point of being down right inconsistent, we just went out and carried it all on from that second half at Castleford and with the confidence flowing, we at last strung two quite unbelievable halves together, in what was at times a breath taking win.

“Kelly scores … and that was Box Office!”

Those were the final words on the Sky end credits, when you watched it back afterwards and there is no doubt that when we are ‘on it’ we can score some amazing tries and really entertain the spectators. 10 points down at half time and looking slightly second best, you should never write this FC team off, as long as, of course, we have our ‘heads on’!!

At that moment I was ecstatic and so was everyone at home and there in Castleford. And I mean everyone, for as you watch it back and see the joy on Lee’s face and the happiness he and Andy Last embraced as Kelly dived in, you realise just how lucky we are to have a set of guys running our team who are as big a fans, as we all are!  

I grumble when we lose and dance when we win, for I’m a fan and its expected of me. But I was proud of our lads on Thursday, as we witnessed a second half renaissance of amazing magnitude. Once again the tries were well engineered, full of individual style and exciting to watch. In games as tight as this one was, true quality is key and Hull FC had marginally more, as we edged past Castleford Tigers and then blew them away. Our right edge was lethal and in Ratu we must have the find of the season!

With 3 assists in the game, Connor was quite amazing and a relieved and still elated Lee Radford afterwards praised him for responding to his pre-game instructions. He was outstanding as was ‘Commander’ Sneyd and ‘Hat trick hero’ Albert Kelly, as our spine sparkled and shone in the second half Castleford gloom. It was again a wonderful effort by all concerned and with Ellis, Manu, Tumavive, Griffin and Bowden missing, all of whom would have a big call on playing if fit, or not suspended, it was a heartening win for the squad as well.

Realism is needed as well, for we are I guess still a bit in and out. Against Cas and Catalan it was our second half display that got us home, whilst against Salford it was that compelling first half blitz that just saw us win. In the other halves of those games we have been bested by the opposition, but as they say, it’s the points in the table that matter at this point of the season, and another two saw us on 22 and sat in third on Thursday night!!

That’ll do for me!!!!