No, because i think Dean has played very well and been consistent for us. I'd prefer him at centre to Gilmour.

Gilmour is more versatile than Longy.

Its the first comment you have made about Chris Dean before - conveniently timed too



You do have KC playing an awful long time on potentially one leg - Gilmour maybe versatile but he ain't no hooker!

Where is Long was on the bench Kyle can do the acting half work and be bloody quick around the PTB when KC needs a break

Wellens
Gardner
Gidley
Gilmour
Meli
Pryce
Eastmond
Graham
Cunningham
Hargreaves
Wilkin
Flannery
Dixon

Long
Ashurst
Clough
Puletua

Eastmond going into hooker when KC goes off and Long goes to scrum half, we need Kyle's speed at dummy half.

Same here. Gilmour is needed elsewhere.

I cannot believe Long is going to play. That's just silly.

Long has to go in. While Eastmond did a great job, our lack of an out-and-out decision maker made our last tackle plays an absolute farce. We can't afford that in a semi final.

OR

if Long doesn't play, Eastmond needs to be given more responsibility when it comes to the last tackle.

Not on the evidence of his matches this season prior to his injury, no.

I think under Long we'd be more organised but that doesn't mean we'd be better off and i don't want Long to start the game.

I do like the idea of having him on the bench to offer something different should plan A not work

But as a general rule i've not been happy with most of our last tackle plays for a few seasons especially on oppositions line we always tend to panic

Maybe it was planned not to kick on the oppositions try line as it would be better to turn the ball over on their try line than give them 20 free meters

We don't always run it though, we often put indecisive kicks in.

Just because you kick on the last doesn't mean cheap 20m if its a good kick does it it often means a repeat set of a drop out or even a score.

How many times has Long done that though this season?

We must have a goal kicker on the pitch at all times (just in case

)

Long could be a key player on Sunday, and we will need him to be getting goals and having a good kicking game, but he has hardly done it all year.

Would that be Coronation Street then

Huddersfield are full strength and look very strong. We'll have to play better than we have all season to win this one. The momentum is with them.

A lot depends on whether Long plays and if he does whether he is fit enough. We need him for this one as we will have no impact at all from the bench.

No............. but it might be Coronation Street.

Edited to late!!

We will have more impact off the bench than we have in the last couple of games. We'll have at least 3 forwards on the bench which are going to have an impact.

If Long is playing, we best make sure all our tries come in under the sticks.

Of course it would.

He's had a couple of poor games this year but last week we got caught in possession on the last five times. FIVE times in one match. Add to that the fact that, besides Eastmond, Pryce and Wilkin, we had kicks from Gilmour, Flannery and Gidley. There is absolutely no way this would happen with Long on the pitch. Thankfully the rest of our game was good enough to pull us through against Wigan, but we'll lose more games than we win if we keep doing that.

Like I said earlier, I wouldn't mind if Eastmond played 7, as long as he was given charge of the kicking game. Far too much confusion last week.

We also lacked a hooker for parts of the game.

Instead of other players kicking the ball, with Longy we'd just go backwards 50 meters and then turn the ball over there.

longy wouldn't have made much different in the kicking game last week, it might have been worse.

Conroy??



The ONE time i can remember us going back like that was against Bradford and about 5 players were involved!

Longy's kicking has been generally fine this year - head and shoulders above everything else (except Wilkin at Leeds and Pryce in London)

Longys kicking hasn't been the best

I would say it has been average this year, but thankfully his play has been better.

Lets hope he performed on Sunday

Nonsense.

Long has been hit and miss this year and has been partly responsible for a couple of shambolic performances (Bradford at home, Wigan in Edinburgh), but to say that is frankly ridiculous. Long will make the odd poor kick, but last week I don't think we made a single good one on the last tackle, and half the time didn't get a kick in at all. It wasn't much better against Wakey either.

If you honestly think that our kicking game is worse with Long in the side than it was last week you must be scratching your head about how we're top of the table.