What exactly does RA offer us these days?

I can't find one single quality anymore. Am I missing something?

Your not but Ryan does, his winger.

Excellent tackling and good drives forward.

Is that what you want from your No4 though?

Great attributes if you're a hard working forward, but he's not a hard working player, or a forward.

He's good for offering the opposition 2-3 scrums a game.

We've said it over and over, his heart is there 100% and he is a really nice guy. He shown character to fight back from terrible poor form that he said was arisen from a car accident, we only have to take his word and except it, as something like that may effect people in different ways.

He hasn't lost too much strength to crash in a tackle, and he can usually find the line from 3 yards out with men in him.
However he has lost a good yard of pace that gives him momentum to break a tackle.
His tackling his good because of his strength, his positioning in defence isn't so efficient.

His career long downside of his game is he seldom has quality of timing and/or accuracy in passing.
Now when you begin to lose a key attribute of pace you need to have something else to offer, like Bridge does, therein lies the problem, he hasn't. Ryan is on a slide that started three seasons ago. Various wingers have come, gone, changed and changed and still the problem remains.

I just can't understand how his core skills (particularly passing) have just never improved after all this time?

two good drives a game isn't worth anything to the team, he's a passenger, sadly.

Passing is an RL basic he doesn't posses in abundance. If I was Agar, this week I'd keep Ryan out of the gym and have him running up and down the touch line, over and over with wingers working a shift rotation, while he does nothing else but pass back and too until he drops, and then some.
He is shaat at it, but with practice we could pull him around.

I said when we signed Atkins I never rated him as a player at the Wildcats. He has had one good season for us that's it should have been shipped out 2 seasons ago. His level now a days would be at Salford or Wakey. To do what he did last night passing in to touch is unforgivable especially if a try is on.
Time to put out to pastures new.

I recall Smith stating when they signed him that he couldn't do the basics and they had to go back to basic grip and static pass work.

Hasn't really worked!

Stated last night - The only centre in SL that can't pass .

i haven't totally got a problem with that, i know it should be a requirement of a centre to be able to pass to his winger, but i think with his size he should be running over the top of people, running through opposition players, quick ptb.

Play to his strengths, but as i said before, feels like we're carrying him at the moment, he's filling a shirt, and bugger all else.

maybe you could excuse the one handed pass, but the one in the second half was simply an uncontested simple "ship it on" pass, and he still found the crowd.....it's so poor

We shipped out Jon Feildhouse for finding the crowd every week and he was a far better player than Atkins.

Question is, what do we do with him, and more to the point our 3/4 for next year.
Options on the books for 2016:

Ratchford
Evans
T King
Monaghan
Atkins

Those options/combinations don't look strong enough

It's his decision making. When to pass (and his choice of pass) vs when to back himself and run.

It looks to stem from a confidence issue. In those first couple of seasons he was immense, but has sadly, steadily declined from there.

I'd like to see him get back to his best for us, but when a dip in confidence lasts several seasons, you can't really call it a dip anymore, and there may be no way back.

Unfortunately, his good seasons now seem to be the blip, and the norm is his current level.

Toby for Bridge.
Rhys for Atkins.

I don't think that's good enough RD for where we need to be.

Toby King looks like he might be a decent player in a few years, but not yet.

My guess is Gidley, Lineham, Evans, Monaghan, Russell as the starting back line for 2016

Seconded

I have doubts over Joel because he too has lost a yard of pace. Although he can pass better that Ryan.

Is anyone else puzzled to why we have signed Lineham when we have Evans, Ormsby, Russell, Penny and Monaghan at the club?

Not short of wingers!

Ahh the scapegoat thread appears...

There is no scapegoat here , Just Ryan Aktins shockingly bad passes.

We Lost last night for plenty of reasons , Atkins was just one of them

Apparantly Warrington are planning to go with Gidley at 6. Whether that leaves Ratchford at fullback, centre, loose or at Wigan is anyones guess.