D'oh!
Hornets fall foul of obvious homer.
If referee Jamie Leahy had leaned any further towards Hull KR, he'd have fallen over. Battered 17-3 in the penalty count, Hornets were always on the back foot, and its credit to their durable attitude that they held the Robins to a meagre 14 point margin.

Increasingly swayed by the baying cries from the popular side, Mr Leahy was sufficiently intimidated to bow to their every cat-call.

Indeed, the vociferous whinging of the locals set the tone for the afternoon. Overinflated with arrogance, Hull KR expect sides to turn up and turn over, but Hornets had other ideas.

After just two minutes, Lee Doran gathered a bouncing ball in hhis own 20 metre zone and rammed it 60 metres down the home side's throat - heckled all the way by disgruntled Rovers fans claiming a knock on.

Hull KR survived the scare and, buoyed by a string of penalties clocked a brace of quick-fire tries from Cockayne and Gallagher: the former from broken play when a Weisner pass went to ground, the latter exploiting a stretched narrow side defence from acting half.

With Hull KR given leeway to pursue some rather agricultural tactics in the tackle and Hornets pulled at the slightest indiscretion, the half degenerated into a rearguard action. Four times the home side forced drop-outs; each time Hornets repelled the onslaught.

And, with Hull KR testing the elasticity of the laws, it took intervention by the touch judges to spot offences that the home fans thought had led to further scores.

But Hornets proved frustratingly resilient. Rag handed Rovers fullback Cockayne spewing possession repeatedly under close attention - to the point where he refused to run the ball at the line.

But, with the penalty count ticking over at the rate of one every four minutes Rovers' pressure had to tell and Goddard squeezed in wide out to score just past the half hour. Weisner hoyed the ball wide and missed another gift penalty on the hooter. Hornets 14-nil behind, Rovers clearly frustrated.

The second half began in predictable fashion; a penalty from the first possession; Webster capitalising to score.

As Hornets battled to overcome a rising tide of relentless pressure, Mr Leahy picked a player at random: Phil Hasty sin-binned for an innocuous offence at the tackle. Adding insult to injury, from the resulting field position Barker fed a pass three metres forward to Smith; the Hornets defence stopped anticipating the whistle; even Smith turned expecting to be pulled. But the officials chose not to see the pass and Smith, embarrassingly, celebrated his try under the black dot.

It was one riduculous decision too far - and it seemed to push Hornets into action.

On the hour, Dave McConnell slid a grubbber behind the static home defence; Paul Anderson first to the ball to touch down. Then a 50 metre Sam Butterworth break had the Rovers' defence in all sorts of problems. He turned Rivett inside out before sending Chris Giles in for a quality try.

The closing quarter saw Hornets play some decent, cohesive football, but some indifferent decision making and a willingness to turn over cheap possession meant it came to nought.

And that was that, really. Hull KR ground out a win and Hornets struggled to gain any real momentum - under the cosh from first minute to last as the man in the middle took repeated advice from the popular side.

Proving that no-one likes a sore winner, Rovers coach Justin Morgan ingratiated himself to his griping fans: "Ridiculous... blah, blah, blah... penalties... blah, blah, blah... disappointed... blah, blah, blah... obvious tactics... blah, blah, blah..." Look up 'moaning' in the thesaurus and fill in the gaps for yourself.