11:01am Friday 28th March 2008
By Simon Parker
Excuse me but I always thought Super League’s Grand Final was in October and not March.
Don’t they play a full 27-game fixture-list first and then the play-offs?
You can understand my confusion given some of the knee-jerk
comments from Bulls fans already.
Apparently, if I heard it right, this year has been written off. Super League XIII is kaput at Odsal according to the know-it-alls.
Their logic being simple. The Bulls have lost four out of eight and are therefore completely out of the race.
There is no point in denying it. Might as well just play out time.
Of course, by the same thought process, St Helens can forget any hopes of autumn glory as well. And Wigan too.
They’d both suffered three defeats after round eight and are clearly over the hill.
As for Hull? Might as well save the KC’s pitch for the football team’s unlikely promotion push.
It’s a two-horse race this year. Leeds, the runaway train at the top, against Warrington. The remainder are just there to make up the
numbers.
Leeds, so I’m told, are on another world and simply unstoppable. Warrington, having lost only twice, are their only serious opposition.
You could be forgiven for forgetting that the Bulls have actually won three of their last four.
Amid all the doom and gloom
forecasts, that is easily overlooked because of the Leeds thrashing.
Yes, they were completely swamped at Headingley. But who hasn’t been?
Well, apart from Cas of course, and look what good that’s done them.
Anyone who saw Leeds steamroller Hull the other day will know about the Rhinos’ awesome form of late.
But the final is still half a year away and that’s a long time to keep playing like that.
Steve McNamara will not be happy to be sat in mid-table with a 50-50 record. But it is hardly time to start manning the lifeboats.
He would have expected better at Wakefield on the opening day but the other losses – against Saints at home, away to Wigan and then the Leeds thumping – were always going to be tough
’uns. Surely the time to judge what impact they will have had, if any, on the Bulls’
season should be in the autumn, not the spring.
St Helens have tripped up against the likes of Huddersfield and Catalans. But you don’t hear the panic button going off there just yet.
The Bulls are clearly hurting because of the absence of so many big players through injury. Take half a dozen key men out of any team and see how they would get on.
Hull, who have nine major casualties, are suffering even more. With six losses from their eight games, they are playing catch-up big time.
But is it such a crisis at Odsal? Nothing is ever decided at this stage of the campaign. Not that it will stop the doom merchants from proclaiming this as the beginning of the end.
It’s just typical of the mentality of message boards and phone-ins when fans demand success straight away and all the time. So any defeat is viewed as disaster.
These are probably the same people who dismissed the Bulls in 2005 when they got off to a shocker.
That year they lost five of the first nine, including a 40-point bashing from Leeds at home. But remind me, how did the season eventually pan out?
Maybe it will end up a season of frustration for the Bulls. But to write the obit in March is pure madness.
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