If Roberts isn't fit don't chance him. If he's fit he starts.

coaching 101 if you put a suspect player on the bench and he has to come on for injury, then gets hurt it's 2 substitutions down. Start him and it happens it's just 1.

by the way, this is the strongest 19 we have so it'll be a good indicator of how we'll do this year.

Agree with you, to be honest Matty Russell has been winding me up for a long time, probably for the same reason as yourself which is mostly not his fault. Like I said earlier I don't think the future is Matty Russell his errors probably outnumber his good moments and his try scoring stats are poor. It's time now to find out if the future is in the existing squad or whether we need to recruit. Brown should really be given a run of games to see whether he fits in or not.

A big problem we have with Russell & Lineham is that neither of them are designed for jumping to catch a well floated kick so straight away the effectiveness of both our wingers is limited. At least Lineham has some size to barge his way through if he decides to use himself as a Ryan Hall type winger but Russell doesn't even have the size or speed to do that. Russell is more designed for catching a well aimed pass into space & rushing the line...unfortunately too many of the passes intended for him either go to ground or into touch or get dropped. A few years back we had the luxury of the likes of King, Hicks ,Joel & Fa'afili who got a lot of their tries off the boot of Briers who we have still not replaced in terms of effective tactical kicking.

Very true. Shows how spoilt we were with Monaghan and King in particular - they were exceptional at that.

As was perfectly clear my post was not just about your post but typically you are so egotistical that is another of your assumptions. If by abrasive you mean I don’t accept your view as gospel then guilty as charged.
Still you don’t deal with the issues I raised about your post, but go off on another tangent, and resort to personal abuse...which strangely is the criticism you aim at me.
On a different note you have rather taken me by surprise tonight by actually praising the team. Well done you.

To be honest mitch browns overall performance and the better balance of the team vindicates earlier criticism of Russell. We still need Russell to be an option though so I hope he knuckles down and is ready in the case of injuries.