Inconsistent the only thing nice to say. Although ridiculously inconsistent.

https://www.therhinos.co.uk/report/wake ... rhinos-10/ Stats.

https://www.therhinos.co.uk/report/wake ... rhinos-10/ Stats.

Thing that annoyed me most about Hicks last night is he spoke so well about refereeing on Rugby AM recently and then proceeded to act like a pedantic school teacher. The game was never going to flow due to the conditions but some of the whistle blowing for pens was ridiculous. And the missed knock ons, forward passes and offsides from him and the touchies was shocking. Awful.

All the credit goes to our defence imo yea Wakey made errors but how many of those were forced by our defensive shape line speed or impact? Plenty of them.
Although Tui took his try well he's still way off been good enough imo 3 times in that 1st half Handley covered kicks he should be ckearing up.
In the pack Ferres & Singo still not good enough the rest were very good in those conditions.
Newman showed the Centre spot is his to lose & credit KW he was excellent in the BR.

Yes our line speed and shape was far better than it has been, changed the dynamic of the game.

i thought newman played it really smart on his break, he didn't have the speed to get there and he risked getting too close to the touchline where almost any tackle coming in from the side would send him into touch
tui might be a good assett next season once the conditioner works on him but i bet no one thought he had the speed to go that far for his try

Positives
Our defence was excellent, the best it’s been this season. And obviously we picked up 2 much needed points in the league. Newman, Dwyer, Merrin and Seumanufagai all played well.

Negatives
Our attack is dreadful. Lolohea had a poor game, with the exception of his interception try. Ashton Golding should have start at full back next week for me. And how does Brad Singleton keep making the side, he is the new Jamie Mathiou.

To be fair to Tui I don’t think Golding would have had the nouce to score that try, judging our attack in that weather is futile at least we made quite s few breaks

I’d be more concerned with Tui’s defensive play at full back. When they were on our line at the start of the game he was never in shot to defend the kick. He had no appetite to try to catch the bombs, and I don’t really remember him making a tackle all game?

With the ball, he scored a good try, but also hurled it into touch when we could have scored in the second half.

He’s not the player we need at this point, due to his defensive failings and attitude.

and Peter Smith gave him an 8

Peter Smith shows every week that he knows bugger all.

That's pretty harsh.

Happy with that result and the performance.

Merrin and Newman fantastic, Dwyer, Ava, Watkins and the wingers all good aswel imo.

Really liking the look of Ava in the short time he's been here.

Newman showed why the Watkins call, while a sad one, was the right one. He's a star. 16 tackle busts last night. When you think of how much he's improved this last few month, to the point that he's regularly one of the best players on the pitch already, then forcast that to the start of nxt season when he's turning 20, its scary to think how good he's going to be. The strength, athleticism and footwork are a joy to watch.

Newman plays with aggression - he’s going to be tricky to handle when he matures.

He continually captions pictures of the players wrong and his assessment of players often is pretty odd.

Newman's physical stature for 19 is impressive. He could easily develop into a Keith Senior type frame, add that to his natural game and weve got one hell of a player on our hands.

What’s encouraging is both him and Jack Walker have basically come into the team and almost instantly made that position their own, Newman has basically taken ownership of that position now, like Walker did before him

If we had a decent half back pairing we would be so much better.
The forwards with the exception of Ferres and Singleton were not too bad.
The backs did what they had to do apart from Lolohea.
Sutcliffe like most have said is not a half back and Myler gets worse every game.
Like someone has said he is probably the worse number 7 Leeds have had and I would go as far as saying he is the worse scrum half in SL right now.
If we continue with Sutcliffe and Myler in the halves we will be firm favourites for relegation.

Cheer up, at least we won, and nilled a team away for the first time in a long time!

I know its fashionable to slate Tui, but apart from dropping the ball a couple of times in collision (one of which wasn't a knock on but was given as so) what did he do so bad on Friday, his intercept and Try basically secured the game for us, it was a high risk play but give him credit it paid off.

To be fair his positiong was utterly horrendous, and without his team mates efforts would have resulted in a number of scores against us. I don't think the interception in anyway masks his overall performance, which was absolutely woefull to be fair.

Im with Gotcha re-Tui he was abysmal and needs shipping out asap.

Maybe it`s the weather that`s making me negative today mate.
But on reflection no I just think Lolohea was poor apart from his interception gamble that paid off and saved him having to make a tackle.

After the first kick from Wakey (which forced a drop out) was defended by Handley with Tui nowhere in sight, I then watched him very closely for the rest of the game. He wasn't within cooee of any of the attacking kicks as he wasn't defending the line. Most of the time he was either in the line (not because he'd made a tackle mind) or he was ball watching. He simply doesn't have the concentration to defend at fullback and that's before you look at either his tackle technique or attitude to defence.

He took his try quite well, and whilst some will say it was a high risk play to go for the intercept, given how he shies away from contact in defence, I think he was actually trying to find a way not to make the tackle.

I get that it's difficult when you've moved a long way for work, and how it can be tough to settle in, but with his fitness issues and general attitude he's not really helping himself. With the ball, there's a reasonable player in there if you can find him, but he's not what we need whilst ever he has no interest in defending.

Funny one really because whilst we have a lot of people questioning his weight etc, not one person has mentioned he was blowing for or looked unfit.

So maybe the problem is actually with motivation and what's in the top two inches and nothing to do with his body shape at all. Not saying that makes it any better but I think there is a bit of an obsession with his weight and it actually goes a bit deeper than that. Losing 3 stone isnt suddenly going to make him want to be bothered or make tackles. Ability is one thing, application is another as we all know.

Either way, with talk of a new half and Walker signing up it doesnt look like Tui will be around forever so let's see if another "business decision" is made come the end of the year...

Losing 3 stone might help him get in the correct positions to make tackles and help his team mates not have to cover for him as well.