It’s a gloom, overcast Tuesday morning and as people wake up all thought of summer is a distant thought as more importantly people are coming to terms with the weekends Super League action. For the first time this season London have now lost two in a row, the first a close encounter at Griffin Park against a strong Hull side, and then last night against winless Leigh.
Obviously losing any game isn’t good but to lose two in a row and against two teams that we can beat is even more disappointing. In the Hull game we were outplayed and not helped by the referee, however we can’t blame the ref all the time, we have to play to him and that’s what Hull did. London also did throw away a 10 point lead, which against Hull is unforgivable. The game was won or should I say lost half way through the second half when there was a huge mix up between Leuluai and Hopkins after being awarded a penalty. It destroyed the Broncos momentum and then Hull pounced.
As for last night, well what can I say? Ever since the fixture list was released people were labelling it as a potential banana skin, memories of Halfiax, Cas were at the forefront of peoples memories as London typically don’t play well or turn up against these teams. By all accounts London didn’t play well last night, but then they haven’t been playing well away all year. Whilst Leigh had been the whipping boys, they had been slowly getting better and whether you’re going to admit it or not their first win was going to come at some point. Unfortunately their first win came against us, there’s nothing we can do about it, its part and parcel of being a London fan I suppose. It’s obviously going to hurt more because of McLinden’s sin binning 8 minutes from time and then with former Bronco Rob Jackson crashing over a minute later would hurt the Broncos. Anyone remember a Martin Offiah hat trick for Salford against us? Former players scoring against us will always hurt, but its hard fact of sport.
London’s play off chances are far from dead. The Super League is some what unpredictable this year. Wakefield beat Wigan and thrashed Leeds last night but then got thumped by the rampant Broncos side when they came down to GP. Who’d thought it Leeds would lose to Wakefield but beat Bradford in a thrilling encounter at the Osdal on Friday night? It is near enough impossible to predict anymore and this can only be good for teams like London who tend to be a little inconsistent. It also makes for very exciting rugby league, every game seems to have you on the edge of your seat even if you don’t support any of the teams on show. Like the Saints v Bulls game yesterday. That game could’ve gone either way and you didn’t know where the points were going to go until the end when Paul Deacon decided to for the one, still not sure why he did! SO even if London are losing so are other teams, and I’m sure we won’t be Leigh’s only scalp this year.
What must be remembered is that London are still a relatively small squad, compare the team sheets on the back of the Hull ‘Game On’ magazine. Hulls stretched down the whole page, whilst London’s stopped 2/3 down. London undoubtedly have a lot of talent but that talent is going to get tired and Fridays game would have taken a lot out of them. After the game they were dead, to pick themselves up for a game on Monday was always going to be a big ask. This is where the big squads come in. Teams like Hull, Saints, Bradford all have big squads so they can afford to rest a lot of their players and if they get injuries then they can bring in replacements. If London get injuries then we always seem to question, well whose going to fill the space? This year, the question hasn’t always had to be asked, but with an ever lengthening injury list and with 3 possibly injured after last night, is it any surprise we lost? There’s only so much hard hitting tackles the players can take. Let’s hope the Tony Rea loan campaign kicks in shortly and we pick up some useful players, Mr Botham you around at all?
London has made a great start to the season and possibly we got a little complacent. Not since I’ve supported them at least have we won on the first day of the season, until this year when we beat play off rivals Warrington. London were scoring freely and playing very attractive rugby. However, in the past few weeks I think its become apparent London have a rather leaky defence. This cost us against Hull and I’m guessing against Leigh. Defence will win the games not the attacking flair. It is nice to watch but if for every try we score we concede two it won’t make for good season. That is obviously an extreme, but London have conceded very soft tries, especially against Wakey and Widnes, but it just wasn’t a problem then because of the scores we put on them. With poor defence comes poor discipline and whether they were controversial or not, two men have been put in the bin in the past two games for holding down. When Greenwood was binned against Hull it was because one of the Broncos players missed a tackle which allowed Raynor I believe to slip through and it was Greenwood with a flying cover tackle that stopped a certain try.
This article probably does seem a bit negative, but was it a case of fans expecting too much? Look how badly we played in places last year but still finished the season respectively. London are penetrating defences something which hasn’t been seen before. They can’t be perfect all the time, not even Leeds can, and I must admit I thought they could’ve done an Arsenal this year and not lost a Super League game, they looked so strong. London are still developing and it will take time. Lastly, if we as fans weren’t unhappy about this weekends performances wouldn’t we be bad fans? Why should be let the team off, they played badly and we need to improve no point hiding sweeping it under the carpet. You get no points for being friendly in sport.
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