Once again Hornets were haunted by an inability to hold onto the ball, gifting an ordinary, but enthusiastic, Hunslet side their first win of the season. As Hornets sank beneath a morass of dropped ball, cheap penalties, sloppy tackling and awful passing, the visitors stuck to the basics; having done enough in the first hour to soak up the home side's desperate attempt at a late comeback.

Hornets looked flat from the off, and it took only four minutes for Hunslet to play enough half decent football to take the lead through a Larvin try.

With completed sets at a premium, Hornets clung to the ball long enough to send Alex Brown in at the flag on 10 minutes. But Hunslet hit straight back with a sweeping break from Jones, who took the wrong option with players stacked both sides. Having had a let off, Hornets conceded a daft penalty and ex-Hornet Darren Robinson took the two.

From the resulting possession, Hornets contrived to spill the ball and Pennington drove the ball in to extend Hunslet's lead to 14-4.

Hornets did find a scintilla of fluency after 20 minutes when Martin Ainscough released a great pass in traffic for Paul Alcock to crash in and score, but just three minutes later, Dunbar managed to smuggle the ball out of the back of a three man tackle for Freeman to push past half-hearted defending to score.

Having seemingly got the rub of the green and a little momentum, Hornets' woes continued when a Carl Sneyd penalty kick to touch bobbled ridiculously to Cook (a good ten metres short of the touchline) and when Paul Alcock dropped the ball in front of his own posts, Jones strolled through to take the Hawks in 26-10 up at the break.

The talk amongst the fans at half time was that this is where good coaches earn their corn, but you can be pretty sure that Bobbie Goulding hadn't suggested that Alex Brown drop the ball following a 'hit and hope' kick to the winger. From the scrum, Moxon slumped in from a metre.

Briefly roused, Hornets went on the attack. Success came on 52 minutes as Chris Hough exploited a huge hole in the Hawks' defence; then, two minutes later, Todd O' Brien burrowed in by the post. Sneyd added the extras and Hornets were within sniffing distance.

And when Jimmy Elston found Carl Sneyd arriving at pace on 69 minutes, Hornets closed the gap to 28-32!

But instead of striking for home, Hornets reverted to dreadful type and Hunslet cheerfully went back to the basics. Increasingly desperate, Hornets gave away a daft penalty whilst in possession (O'Brien successfully goaded into throwing a punch by Robinson); and when Hasty hit a late drop goal, there was no way back for the home side.

Like pretty much everyone else in the home ranks, Bobbie Goulding wasn't happy.
"That was unacceptable," he said. "Hunslet came with a game plan and they enthusiastically put it into operation. They weren't necessarily better than us, but they did out-enthuse us and deserved the win. We made far too many mistakes and our completion rate was shocking."

In the end there were few positives. The very best thing to do would be to draw a line under this mess of a performance and hope that the problems can be ironed out. And soon.