Agreed. Two years ago, almost to the day, we lost 40-8 away to Catalans, and our pack that day was Mulhern, Clark, Cooper, Longstaff, Holmes, Magoulias. We also had Mata'utia and Currie in the centres. Sacre bleu!

I don't know what Duckie is playing at here (unless it's the usual clamber for attention with expressed faux controversy).

Vaughan and Harrison would grace the pack of any side in Super league.

How many times down the last few years have our bench props come on the pitch, and the impact and intensity has dropped significantly.. Musgrove just keeps that up, Philbin doesn’t have that energy..

I think Philbin has played well recently & should be judged on these games.

Philbin made 20plus meters against Salford, Hull and Kr were 70plus . that’s not playing well in my book. He’ll be lucky to still be at wire next season if Yates signs on

You obviously like your stats so who are you comparing with? Have you compared his Stats with Musgrove, Bullock, Wood. Need to compare like for like. I think we will retain Philbin on his current form but I think Yates will be a step up otherwise why buy him.

It’s not just lack of meters made it’s the missed tackles as well.. Bullock shouldn’t be anywhere near this Wire 17 am baffled by his new 2 year deal.. Musgrove meters are better and his missed tackles are lower, I think Musgrove is a better around player than Philbin. Philbin hasn’t kicked on like expected from a few seasons ago

I don't get carried away with stats ... as I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats. So how many tackles does Musgrove make? If you come in No3 as a tackler should that really be classed as a
tackle? If you rush up and make an attacking player alter his line of running it's not recorded as a contribution. One of the best defensive players I ever played with didn't make many tackles (he was a centre). etc etc.
For me Musgrove & Philbin are very close on performance. So we have Vaughan, Harrison then Musgrove/Philbin as our best four props. Of course Crowther also spends time in the middle & I really like his input. Yates ... yes please.

We have got good depth at prop at the moment, and there will inevitably come a time when we need it, because of injuries and suspensions. For me, when everyone's fit and available, there's not that much between Philbin, Bullock and Wood in terms of who gets that 'fourth prop' bench spot. I'm sure we all agree that it's nice to have enough options that we can afford to ship out Dudson, at least!

Philbin is better than Musgrove, i know he's not been here long, but Philbin has some superb games and some mediocre games. Every single game Musgrove has played has just been ok, he basically comes on to be a steady eddie and Give vaughan and Harrison a rest before they come back on.
I'm not saying he's bad because he isn't, but he's NOWHERE near how he played in the NRL.

Some of the NRL players take a full season to adapt to the way the game is played in Super League, English weather and pitch conditions sometimes longer, Some don`t make the transition and are OK again once they return to the NRL.

Hopefully he will play better with experience as he plays more games.

Matt King was poor for his 1st season with Wire. Michael Monaghan was average at halfback for his first season, but was brilliant once Tony Smith moved him to hooker.

Max Wood is young. He could develop into a right cracker.

Philbin and Bullock are basically the finished article and both can be improved on with careful recruitment. The Philbin of 2019 would be a different story.

Quote ="Smiffy27"I don't get carried away with stats ... as I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats.'" Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.

Quote ="Smiffy27"I don't get carried away with stats ... as I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats.'" Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.

Musgrove made 30m against Hull KR, Bullock made 26m against Salford.

We play quite a rigid structure in terms of our sets of 6, you can bet Thewlis & Ashton take the first two, King or Tai take third, Vaughan takes a hit up followed by Dufty then a kick.

We know Vaughan is one of the best in the league for gaining ground, so that's his job.

If Philbin isn't being asked to take the ball up as part of the game plan he shouldn't be criticised for a lack of metres. I don't know why that is the case as Philbin was always a decent carrier of the ball, but he just isn't being used like that by Burgess. It has to be deliberate, there's no way they would get away with it otherwise...

Quote ="Wires71"Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.'" I bet these analysts can come up with all sorts of useful stuff. But at the end of the day you can't really beat someone who has played, watched & coached the game watching video analysis & making decisions. Stats are OK but there is always a bit of a story behind the stats. You can't just make decisions based on a few simple stats.

Quote ="Wires71"Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.'" I bet these analysts can come up with all sorts of useful stuff. But at the end of the day you can't really beat someone who has played, watched & coached the game watching video analysis & making decisions. Stats are OK but there is always a bit of a story behind the stats. You can't just make decisions based on a few simple stats.

Very true, i remember it well, i still have the shirt with monaghan 7 on


I hope he does hit his NRL best over here as he'll be great for us. I'm a fan of him anyway he just seems a bit more reserved playing for us, hopefully firmer grounds and consistant decent weather will see him firing for us.
As with Bullock, he does have the odd Game where he seems to realise he's a big dude and find his aggression. He's a cracking forward at his best but never seems to be consistant with it. Burgess must see all the good aspects of him or we wouldn't have given him a new deal.
I hope we extend Wood's contract as i think he's really good, and at 20 years old will only get better.
I really liked tge look of Luke Thomas in pre-season, i thought he was on a higher level than before so i hope he can come back and improve like Harrison has.
Fitzgibbon, Currie, Nicholson, Crowther and Holroyd are all brilliant and instill a hard hitting, skillfull backline we've not had for ages

Yeah I was just picking up on the "I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats" comment. Seemed a bit dismissive of stats to me.

Iver not really watched the nrl en masse for many a year so I wasn't familiar with our number 12, but he's a bit of a curates egg of a signing

He's probably a slightly above average nrl 2nd row, ad far as I'm aware he hasn't been in origin contention. Buy burgess obviously knew bringing him over, he would be HIS version of whatever Powell was expecting from mcguire and previously, olly Holmes.

He must be the mentor our young back rowers didn't get last year, a standard setter, a pack leader, I wouldn't cross burgess and I wouldn't short change fitzgibbon.

The other thing to think about here, is that he was being courted by Leeds, and a few posters on there have lamented missing out on his signing.

Just imagine the difference he could be making to Leeds powder puff set of forwards this year. It's as close to visually measurable as you'll get

I think leeds were favourites to sign him until fitzgibbon spoke to both Kurt gidley and Mick monaghan at the knights and they both couldnt speak highly enough of our club which i believe swung it in our favour.

He refers to himself as Lachy Fitz…..normally that kind of thing would get my goat yet with him it just makes me love him more. I spend a lot of the 80 mins watching him - he’s a brilliant competitor who loves the attrition and clearly hates losing.

Yes ... the more you question stats the more you see their limitations & how they can be used.

I don’t normally bother with stats, but after been at Halton Hospital getting surgery on on my busted elbow.. injured by playing rugby.. I was looking at the Betfred website.. I agree with third man in counting as tackles been a bit misleading because by the time the 3rd man joins, the tackles pretty much completed.. if Yates is joining I fear for Philbin getting much game time next season..

I think this is a really good post. I suspect we have not seen any major change in Philbin's performance over the last few years. But what we are seeing is a much stronger pack combined with much higher levels of motivation / effort and better coaching. So Philbin's performance looks the poorer by comparison.

Perhaps we should bask in the sunshine of a pack that is getting better by the week with ( hopefully ) Yates coming in, and the younger props coming through later on, rather than look back to the gloomy period of the last few years.

.

Do you mean Philbins performance this season look poorer? If that’s case shouldn’t he be raising his levels to match the other forwards.. or has he now reached his peak and he can’t improve on what he is doing.. Philbins defence can be sloppy at times..

i think philbin's best performances this year came at left second row, the saints game was his best game as a middle