Probably be talking to myself most of the time but... :)

A really good performance by Hull against Warrington. They rode their luck a little at times and Warrington's handling was terrible but they defended ferociusly as per usual, not giving Johns, Briers or the others much space or time and when they did make the odd break the last ditch tackling was great. Solid rather than spectacular going forward Hull kept the mistakes low and when the chances were there they took them. A super hat trick from Blacklock but I thought the stars were Swayn and Brough.

Not sure how they'll get on next week against Bradford, at times they did look tired and if the Bulls spread the ball out wide it could be trouble. Still a great match tonight and roll on next Saturday. :)

I thought MotM should have gone to Brough. He made some superb saving tackles on Hull's line as well as several key attacking contributions, but Hull's overall performance was excellent. I was disappointed with Warrington though, they made far too many handling errors and didn't take advantage when they had the upper hand. Still, anything other than a Hull win would have been a terrible injustice, even though the ref tried to give Warrington a big hand with some... interesting applications of the momentum rule.

I don't think Hull will have much joy at Odsal, the Bulls have timed their run to perfection and I think they're favourites to win at Old Trafford. Leeds are still coming out of their slump and Saints are missing too many key players. I fancy it'll be a Leeds-Bradford final with the Bulls coming through in the last 20 minutes.

ETA: I was disappointed by London's tactics last night. Even though Bradford took their foot off the gas once they hit 40, London only really started playing well when they dropped the ultra-defensive mode they started with and switched to the more attack-minded tactics they'd employed for the rest of the season. If they'd gone at Bradford from the start they could have made it a much closer contest. The Bulls started really nervously and couldn't seem to retain possession, but London didn't take advantage and paid for it in the end.

For Hull to win everything's got to go right, they've got to take their chances and keep the mistakes and penalties down to a minimum. And they've probably got to have most of the luck as well.

It'll still be difficult for whoever wins, next Saturday's match will be a tough encounter and then they've still got to play the losers of Leeds v Saints. I hate to say it but of the two Bradford would probably have the better chance.

I was disappointed with London as well, I was expecting a much closer game.

I just can't see Hull keeping up the required intensity for 80 minutes. Bradford seem to have a habit of scoring 20-30 unanswered points in 10 minutes to kill sides off, something Hull are quite vulnerable to.

Well that was depressing. :( Didn't get in from w**k until 6.10 by which time Hull were loosing 6-0 and had a player sent off. And before I could sit down Bradford had scored again.

Maybe a little biased but I've seen numerous head high tackles that were just as bad, none of which ended up in a sending off. And the crap about persistent head high shots, there were three one of which was little more than a touch. What a time for the ref to break the tradition of putting virtually everything on report. What a wanker.

Still I didn't think Hull played very well in the first off, too many mistakes and if they were trying to compensate for the sending off I don't know but they seemed to abandoned their usual game and go for dodgy off loads which led directlt to at least two of Bradford's tries. The second half was a lot better, they didn't score but they did cause Bradford a few problems. Their defence was somewhat better as well, when Bradford scored just after half time I thought they could make hundred.

Hull were gonna be up against it with 13 men but with 12 they had no chance. I'm not gonna make any judgement on the Bradford performance, I'll just wait and see how they get on next week.

The conditions certainly favoured Leeds on Friday and Saints definitely missed their players who were out. At times they were trying to over complicate things, there were openings but they were throwing an extra pass when it wasn't needed. They did show weaknesses in Leeds defence towards the end but for the most part they were outplayed and it would have been somewhat of a travesty if they had snatched it.

If it's dry I'd just favour Saints next Friday. Bradford will need to be more than a try in front with 10 minutes to go because they do seem to tire a bit.

I missed all the first half because I was driving back from Woking's match, but it barely seemed worth it to sit down for the second half. However, Hull really can't blame losing 71 points on being down to 12 men - they conceded possession far too easily and handed several tries to Bradford on a plate. I think they only completed 6 sets of 6 in the first half, which is a shocking statistic. Second half they were a little better, but didn't really look like breaching a resilient Bulls defence.

I'm not sure the conditions favoured Leeds so much, I think they just used them much better. Their kicking was very good, whereas Saints had a poor game with the boot. It was quite a nervy last 10 minutes though, if Saints had scored their first 5 minutes earlier than they did, they'd probably be in the Grand Final by now. But I still think Bradford will win next Friday, Saints simply have too many good players missing.

A good close game last night and when Wilkin went over for his third I did think I was going to be right and Saints were gonna win but Bradford dug deep and probably just deserved the win. After the Bulls went twelve in front it didn't look good for the Saints but they managed to get back into it mainly through good runs from dummy half by Cunningham and if it wasn't for the Bulls tightening up I think the result would have been different. Both sides looked pretty shattered in the second half and a couple of mistakes either side probably cost them tries. Deacon's drop goal was calmly done. Not sure if that will have any effect on the Grand Final but it should be a great game. :)

It was a really good match, the end was very tense. I thought Saints probably played the better football but Bradford were simply more effective with what they did. If it wasn't for the fact they conceded so many needless penalties in the first half (alright a couple were very harsh, but most were down to indiscipline) then they'd have had a much easier time of it.

It would have been interesting had Saints not had so many first-teamers out through injury, a couple of their youngsters made bad errors at crucial points which you wouldn't expect from someone like Long or Sculthorpe. I might have to revise my Grand Final prediction - the way Bradford tired in the second half might favour Leeds in a big way, but last year Bradford had the week off and lost so it may not be so crucial to the outcome. I hope the Grand Final is as good as last night's match, it's just a shame I'll miss the first half :(

A very scrappy game with way too many mistakes, I had hoped for something better for the Grand Final. I don't think the ref helped, his 10 metres seemed very shallow to me. The Bulls were the better side but that isn't saying much, Leeds were terrible, especially in the second half. Bradford's defense was solid but Leeds seemed devoid of ideas and composure, there were several ridiculous passes when they were attacking. Again both sides seemed very tired and surprisingly, at least to me, Leeds tired the most. Overall Bradford deserved to win but I was disappointed with the game.

I saw a bit of the match between Australia and NZ, some exciting attacking play but defensively both sides looked poor. I'm not sure what chances to give GB against either but I fear we'll find it hard going against both.

I didn't get to see the first half, but listening to the radio it sounded like it was a pretty even contest. Second half Bradford's defence stepped up a gear and they just shut Leeds down. I think they missed Senior quite a bit but even so, there were far too many errors. It was just a reversal of last year's Grand Final, when Bradford didn't turn up.

The ref was pretty bad, I've never been impressed with Ashley Klein whenever I've seen him ref. He missed a lot of stuff which thankfully didn't have a bearing on the final result, and the video ref also had a bit of a mare.

I think the tri-nations will be really close. NZ seem to have stepped up a bit since last year, and they've still got Vainikolo/Hape to come into the team. Provided GB play as well as they did last time round, each team should have an equal chance of winning the thing.

A very poor performance by GB last night especially in the first half, defensively we were atrocious and only marginally better going forward. There didn't seem to be any leadership and the ball control was poor. I was very disappointed with Cunninngham, the NZ markers were not great but he made very few runs from dummy half and I hate to agree with Stevo but Carney was just rubbish and should have been took off. We had one decent patch just after half time which did show what we're capable off and highlighted the weaknesses in the NZ defence but we could and pehaps should have lost by more.

I'm sure we'll improve on that performance but we'll have to or Australia will slaughter us.

It was shite. I know there's no decent opposition in the northern hemisphere, but surely we could have found a Superleague side with no GB/NZ/Aus representation to give us a game beforehand? To go into a match against a team who beat Australia having not played a single warm-up game is absolutely ridiculous.

Having said that, if we'd done the basic things correctly like complete our sets of 6, then it wouldn't have been half as bad. The defensive line was appalling but that will be fixed as the players play more games. Making schoolboy errors by throwing the ball away shouldn't happen with the top players though. So we now need to either beat Australia twice, or spank NZ in the next game, to go through to the final. Great.

A much better performance by GB yesterday but I still think we lack that spark. After a shaky start we played ok in the first half without really looking dangerous. At the start of the second half we had a good patch of pressure which resulted in our try but we never went on from there. I don't think Australia played at their best and it was only in the last ten minutes or so that they showed what they can do with two well worked tries. I thought Carney played well, though I'm surprised the Aussies didn't pepper him with bombs, and Pryce looked dangerous with the ball.

A big improvement but still a little more is needed, I'm still not sure about our defence and we don't really seem to be all that organised in attack most of the time. We've still all to do to win a game.

Aside from the first 10, it was a much better performance. The conditions were very tricky which might explain some of our errors with ball in hand, but I hope that they'll be eliminated for the next game. The defence was the most encouraging thing though, they actually looked like a proper defensive unit which did extremely well to restrict the Aussies to just 8 points for 70 minutes.

If we play like that against NZ, we'll beat them. Whether we'll get enough points to make qualification realistic is another matter, but we've still got a chance of doing it.

Well, that makes things interesting. I was fairly confident we'd beat the Kiwis, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that emphatic. I missed most of the game because I was on the road, but from the radio updates it sounds like everything just clicked and we played beautifully. I am worried about our stamina though, that's twice now we've conceded late tries after battering the opposition for 70 minutes.

I managed to avoid hearing the score and watched it last night. The first half performance was amazing, we controlled the ball, completed our sets and starved the Kiwis of possession, limiting them to two or three chances. In the second half we weren't as strong, the Kiwis played better, but it was still a good performance and we looked dangerous everytime we were in their half. I agree with you about the stamina, though with the injuries we picked up we did only have one sub for much of the second half. At least we've given ourselves a chance against the Aussies and hopefully it'll be a really good game.

After the great performance last week, back to our irritating worst today. Australia were nothing special; they produced one or two moments of brilliance but most of their points came from our defensive errors - either giving away stupid penalties or missing tackles. We were more than capable of beating them if we'd played well - they only had 12 men for a quarter of the game!

We played dreadfully, we didn't w**k anywhere near hard enough either in attack or in defence. Too often it was just one-out rugby, no decoy runners, no men powering onto the ball. We only started playing after 75 minutes when it was far too late to do anything about qualifying. It's so frustrating that we can perform so well against New Zealand, but as soon as we come up against Australia it's like some kind of psychological barrier appears and we're incapable of playing well.

I was very disappointed with our performance. In all departments we were poor but for me the kicking was most irritating, Minichello is good but we made it really easier for him, I think there were only two kicks that caused any trouble and one of them poor tackling allowed them to get back into the field of play.

As you say Australia were nothing special but they were a lot more controlled than we were and for the most part their defense was solid. Errors cost us but I think we should have been a bit more adventurous, we very rarely tried anything out of the ordinary and not until it was all over did we try to spread the ball wide.

Despite GB not being involved I'm looking forward to the final, I think NZ can't let Australia settle or the Aussies will grind them down. If they get at them like they can and score early then they'll have a chance.

Well, that was a surprise. I've never seen Australia play so poorly, too many handling errors, too many penalties and not enough passion really. Can't take anything away from New Zealand though, they played out of their skins and just as I suggested they'd have to play. Both defence and attack were excellent and the kicking was superb.

I do think it could have been different though, for the first 10 minutes or so NZ totally outplayed the Aussies but then they looked really tired and the interception on the line (more so than the punch up) may very well have won them the game. If the Aussies would have gone over then their confidence would have been sky high. Still they didn't and from then on they vary rarely threatened and when they did handling errors killed them.

It must be me but there were 3 decisions by the video ref I couldn't agree with. NZ's second try I thought was a knock on, when the Aussie player reached out I thought the more ball was knocked from his hands (not deliberately probably) and not a knock on and I thought there was a definite obstruction for one of NZ's tries in the second half.

Still I doubt it affected the result and the better team won.

I missed it all :( When I got back from London and saw the score, I assumed the BBC site had got it the wrong way round! It's the first time the Aussies haven't scored in 22 years, or something like that :thumbsup: But it does beg the question of why they couldn't play like that against us :(