For mine i think were slightly stronger, much so in the backs so creativity should be good, the forwards im slightly worried as a couple of injuries could see us fielding a very young inexperienced pack.
Having said that we did lose sol for most of, & morro for part of last season but we did have burgess & imo we'll miss him the most. I was quite confident at the start of last season, look how that turned out.

Rather than thin I'd say inexperienced. Whitehead and especially Donaldson didn't look out of place when they got there chances last season so while they might struggle to cope with a full season, I think we have talent in the back rows of the pack to cover injuries there. Oddly, given our recent forward history, prop seems to be a weak point where outside the first 4 (Scruton, Lynch, Sculthorpe and Kopczak) first team experience is totally lacking. While Langley and Hall can cover prop I'd rather see us not to have to move the rest of the side about too much.

I think taking 4 or 5 of the first pick players out of any SL team (maybe bar 1 sadly) would leave them struggling and we admirably demonstrated last year that even taking out 3 for a long period (Morrison, Solomona and Godwin only played 31 games between them) from a less strong side can have a significant effect.

The publication of the squad numbers really highlights that in spades. Essentially we have 18 reasonably experienced players and a number of youngsters, some with a few first team games under their belt, others yet to play at senior level.

We really need a repeat of 1999, when Pryce, Deacon & Fielden became established first teamers. Otherwise we look very vulnerable in the event of injuries.

Looking at it positively there are bound to be points in the season where the likes of Crossley, Crookes, Olbison and maybe the Burgii get a chance, and hopefully progress. I'm taking it that Whitehead and Donaldson will be planned to feature in around a dozen games increasing on last years appearances.

I'd say that its a must that Whitehead & Donaldson have to feature fairly regularly and have to perform consistently well.

assuming no injuries then I'd expect donaldson and whitehead to be pretty much sharing the brnch 2nd row spot between them most of the year with worrincy maybe getting the odd game. given we have hall and langley in the squad who can cover prop then we may have opportunites to only have one interchange prop and use two interchange 2nd rowers with hall/langley rotating into prop like peacock used to do. Obviously we'd only want to do this against teams with smaller packs.