Wigan boards hoping for him to be banned,oh and he’s a grub.

He must be a serial killer to be considered a “grub” by Wigan supporters.

Shame on you. Id rather be accused of reading the Daily Mail or The Sun.

Desperate reach that. Was barely a penalty and clearly first contact was on the arm.

I’ve just read the posts on there and to be fair, the latter posts on the topic agree with the Wigan poster who said ‘he’s done nothing wrong’.

What a player we have. Everything we could have hoped for and more. One of the best signings we’ve made in the 35 years since I’ve been following Wire.

It wasnt even a penalty. Kendall knew he’d called it wrong but he’d already blown for it based on the reaction of the Cas players.

Kendall isn’t the best. There were a number of times last night and in previous games where he’s instinctively called the wrong decision and either u-turned, or changed his decision after lineman intervention or crowd response. Also, I question his positioning at times. When Coops scores our first try, why hasn’t he positioned himself in front of the try scorer to see if the ball was placed down. He was behind Coops and at a poor angle of sight to confirm the try, hence no try sent up, for it only to be overturned. The other refs aren’t a load better, but their positioning and instinctive decisions are on another level.

The considered judgement is what makes him good imo.
Strong and wrong loses you championships....aka Russell Smith

I think Cas saw it as an opportunity to run at and rough up our main man.
On another issue Blake seemed to be struggling with an injury and didn't look totally happy at times.

I take your point and I agree- it’s good that he consults others. But if he doesn’t consult, he gets a hell of a lot wrong. Linesmen and video refs only contribute during key aspects of the game. For the most, the ref oversees the vast majority of decisions and Kendall for me makes too many bad calls. He calls too many humdingers/obvious decisions wrong. Example: second half. Charnley and whoever tackles Cas full back mat... Mat clearly drops the ball in the tackle and there’s no way it’s gone backwards. He hasn’t given a pen for ball stealing which is right but proceeds to give Cas turnover and play the ball. Then, changes his decision to the right one. One of the biggies for me is his positioning on Cooper’s try. Surely, as a ref, with a forward carrying player taking the ball over the line you position yourself in front of the forward carrying player/behind the defensive line to see if the ball’s gone down. By fortune of camera angle, our try was rightly approved on the VR. Kendall should have been in the right position and that try taken upstairs as a try.

In conclusion, Kendall is crap.

Most importantly and back on topic. Austin: not ostentatious, but pure class in every department.

What i love about Austin is that he gets Targeted, gets hit hard and roughed up but rather then just shying away he gets aggressive and just gets stuck in harder and tries to smash them. One of our best signings i've ever seen by a long shot, and if Widdop can come in and be at his best we're gonna be unreal

I noticed him rubbing his hip after a challenge on one of his early kicks but didn't notice anything after that. He does have a slight lopsided gate i sometimes think is he limping.

Austin has had a great start but three questions need answering for me before we hail him as one of our best ever signings:

1) Does he have good games against the top teams, in the knock out situations, or is he more a player that carves up weaker sides. If he's the latter it's not necessarily a bad thing, we've struggled in the past to put smaller teams to bed so those players are useful, but the big test will be how does Austin play against the top teams.

2) Related to this is the Nat Wood test (could also be the Greg Mackey test). How does he play when we are behind in a game, or when its a close game, compared to when we are piling up points. Does he pull off big moments when the team is up against it? Nat Wood was probably a less talented player than Austin but he did raise his game when it was needed.

3) Does he maintain his early season form at the end of the season and in to next season. The big question mark over him from Australia was that every time he joins a new club he has a great start and then peters out until his next move.

....he was far from petering out at his last club...he was unplayable coming off the bench.

Well according to the table, hull are one of the top sides and he did pretty well against them! Comparing him to nathan wood is embarrassing

I think a more pertinent question is how far down the league would we fall if we lost Austin to injury.

True, Nat Wood was a quality player for us for 4 seasons.

At this stage the better comparison for Austin is Chris Sandow in the first half of 2016. Sandow couldn't maintain it (partly due to injury to be fair) and his influence tailed off by the business end of the season. If we are to be SL champions we will need to beat better teams than Hull.

The only game he didn’t look influential in was against Saints. The game where our forwards got battered into submission.

Let’s not also forget that he’s pretty much organising all attack on his own as well as talking on the line. Even Price made it clear that the plan was to have Brown organising and Austin carving up with his running. That’s pretty impressive to me.

As much as I liked Wood he doesn’t have anywhere near the all-round game of Austin.

I’m looking forward to assessing him against the 1st placed team when our forwards match them. Might be a different story.

It's worrying that we keep having this issue of our forwards being battered in to submission.

Happened in the Challenge Cup Final last year and then in the Grand Final as well, these were given on here as the reasons why Patton and Roberts were not able to dictate those games.

Perhaps an overhaul is needed - is it time to take a hard look at old favourites like Hill, Cooper, Westwood, Currie and ask are they able to cut it against the very best packs? What about BMM and Hughes - would Saints and Catalans take them?

Are some people really saying that after 14 games? FFS the phenomenon of recency is getting silly now. He's made a very good start - thats all we can say for now.

A number of posters have been saying we need to strengthen our pack for a while. Hill, who once stood out, is nowhere near as effective as he was in his pre Captaincy days.

Our pack of 2019 should not even been discussed on the same URL as the 2011 one.

Morley (capt)
Monas
Carvell
Anderson
Westwood
Harrison

Grix
Wood
Cooper
Solomona

I think we need a bigger guy on the bench for sure. We lack something without Hill and coops.

Never understand why Hilly and Coops go off at the same time. Does SP not see the impact it has on the game like we do.

Come on, you know I was referring to one game

And in that game we did clearly lose the forward battle so inevitable that Austin wouldn’t get a decent platform for us to see how he copes against the top opposition.

Although for what it’s worth I do think we need one more decent big forward for when Hill and Cooper come off. It IS noticeable and tends to coincide with our lull periods in games.

I would say give daz clark or Austin captaincy