It doesn't look like Hewitt is going to get a chance for some reason. Saints were missing 5 players who can all play in the halves...and they still wouldn't pick him. Brown didn't fancy him and neither does Cunningham. I don't know anything about him, but i imagine it's one of two things...the lads talented but is deemed to not be mentally (attitude?) up to it...or he's not got the required skill set, and therefore it doesn't matter what his attitude is like.

My point is, he's not getting picked for a reason so we're probably best just trying to make the best of what we have left.

What I do know is that once we've got a few lads back, we're going to be very difficult to beat.

To be fair to KC on the halves front you've got a lot of injuries in that position and if you went with Turner & Hohaia for the Wigan game then youve pretty much got to go same again for the 2nd game as Id be very suprised if Saints (same as other teams) got in any match training in between the 2 games, it'll have all been rehab work.

So introducing a new halfback partnership for the 2nd game would be virtually impossible.

I don't think Hewitt will be here much longer. His agent putting his name out there and Hes not happy which I totally understand.

The min I read the txt with the team, I knew Bailey was in for a rough time. It invited pressure on us on kicks.

I personally would have put flash second row and jones centre with Dawson on the wing. All first team players and in a game we needed the two points.

We couldn't understand once he was picked that he was shifted from his familiar full back position to one on the wing, big error on KC's part, you can do it with a centre to wing, Bailey looked very isolated and undecisive.

Makinson at full back struggled as well with the infamilarity of Ashworth and Baily in the backs, it just shows how the experience of Wellens can organise a back line.

KC hasn,t got many options to work on though, hopefully the return of Walsh, Wilkin and Percival will change all that. I see the media has jumped onto KC's comments, the fans need to give KC a bit of slack under the present circumstances, its his rookie year as head coach and mistakes will be made along the way.

As I understand it, Bailey hadn't trained with the first team prior to the game.

What,s the situation with Charnock is he injured or out of favour, I thought him or Hewitt would have been better suited to the less intensive Hull game.

The important point is that in three defeats we haven't thrown the towel in.

I'm not particularly bothered with the losses against Wigan and Wind Tunnell KR because both have decent backs who can pile up points quickly. The Hull performance was very disappointing because they are undoubtedly the worst side I've seen in Super League.

Thankfully, we've got a lot of points on the board early. I expected this trough. It happened last season. It's just not possible for any side to go through the entire season at top form. And we certainly don't want to be anywhere close to that at this precise point in the campaign.

If I do have one relatively minor criticism - it is that we haven't promoted as many young backs from the juniors as we have young forwards both at the end of last season and the beginning of this.

You really don't want to be picking kids completely out of the blue to prop up an injury ravaged first team. It's bad for their development. Perhaps we should have thought more about turning a sub slot over to a young back one in two or three games.

Of course, you can never predict injury crises in advance. But as "fast tracks" go ours looks decidedly two-speed with an autobahn turned over to props and back-row forwards and a measly dirt track for anything numbered one through seven.

It could be that KC & Long aren't particularly confident about this cohort of juniors.

I thought Brown said about Hewitt that he'd get chances this year, but with KC in charge this has changed.

Few weeks I've been told

Anybody who has seen Bailey play will know that he is a weak defender. So why put him on the wing where he will have to make more tackles than he would in his normal position of fullback?

His tackling wasn't the problem.

He didn't really have to do much defending. I can't recall him missing a tackle really either. The one for the try he had no chance really.

It was kicks he struggled on.

Not sure whether it's a coaching challenge so much as a scouting challenge.

What I wonder about is our inability to find big backs. Wigan seem to have a production line of 6'0+ athletes who can shift a bit too : Burgess, Manfredi, Gelling are all considerably bigger than anyone we have in the backs. Leeds also have no problem producing or procuring big lads for the threequarters and fullback. Yet our backs production line seems to be based in Lilliput. Makinson and Swift are tiny, as is Lomax. Percival is a slip of a lad, and even Jones is hardly huge, despite playing second row a bit. None of this would mater, of course, if they were fast as whippets with the evasive skills of a particularly slippery eel, but they're not. They're moderately fast, small guys. And as RL is such a physical game, perhaps we shouldn't be overly surprised that a lot of our small backs have spent a fair bit of time injured : Wheeler, Lomax, Percival.

As someone born and bred in St Helens, I recognise that many of my fellow Sintelliners may be more broad than tall, but at 6 foot I wasn't a freak ! Yet even our homegrown forwards tend to be on the small side. Beefy, but short. Clough-clones. So where are the big lads coming up through the youth teams ? Where are our equivalents of Burgess and Manfredi, Hardaker and Watkins ? Get some size in there !

We were asking that exact question during and after the game

That try should never have been given. I saw it on SLS yesterday and Bailey had nailed him over the touchline. I thought that was a terrific tackle given that the rest of the team had left him entirely isolated. Good that he didn't get tempted in like our regular wingers can be. Just a pity we didn't have the video ref present on that occasion.

Not sure I agree with this.

Gelling, he's a terrible back, so not sure I'd be longing for players his size in the centres. He's a back rower.

Manfredi? He's not particularly big. In fact according to the respective club websites Swift is taller and Makinson only 3cm shorter.

Makinson being shorter than Swift doesn't make him any less effective as a winger. Turner is the biggest of the lot that you don't mention, but young Jack Ashworth is taller than him. Carney is probably the most powerful wing in the league and he's shorter than all of them.

I don't think we have an issue producing backs at all TBH. We could put out a back 5 of Lomax, Makinson, Percival, Jones, Swift - could any other teams in SL put out a better home grown back line from players at their club?

As for small forwards, Greenwood is enormous, Savelio is only a couple of cm shorter etc.

Manfredi shorter than Swift? Is someone having a laugh ?

Btw, I disagree on Gelling. I think if he played for us, despite his brainfarts, he'd be our most dangerous back.

Take your point about Greenwood, but also worth noting that he has the best prospects of any forward we've produced since Graham, and he's a big lad. We need more like him.

Fair enough, that's your opinion but I don't see us clambering to swap Percy/Makinson/Swift/Turner/Lomax for Gelling any time soon!

I think the selection of Bailey shows just how much Cunningham doesn't want Dawson in at winger. I'm not sure him at full back would have meant him dealing with high balls any better either, he'd just have been taking them in the middle of the pitch rather than on the side, Hull would still have targetted him.

Taking the high balls at Full Back is generally easier than on the wing. The kicks Bailey struggled with were attacking kicks when he was under a lot of pressure, you don't get that weighted lob from 20m out coming at you when you're at Full Back. It's a mid field bomb, a punt or a grubber that you generally have to deal with.

I think the size of our young backs is completely irrelevant. The problem is we aren't able to - or refuse to - promote players occupying slots one-to-seven anywhere near as quickly as eight-to-thirteen.

Why this is - I don't know.

9 too, we are crying out for a young Roby/ Cunningham to come through

No we don't promote many backs really do we? Lomax, swift, makinson, jones, percy in the current team.

Also, the likes of Gaskell, Matty smith, Jamie Ellis, Scott Moore who are still running about in rugby league.

I realise you aren't particularly bright but - will you ever respond to [uwhat I actually said[/u rather than what I said put through your own filter of prejudice?