Well i'm hoping we can keep Wardle, i think he's frightening in attack with his speed and footwork. I'm hoping Wardle to Wigan is just a rumour as Watson has said he already wants to Keep King for 2023.
All of our forwards were outstanding, really like Harrison, Mikaele did what Mikaele does, Mulhern is like an American Mack truck, just powers forward and goes BANG i really like Mulhern but seems like he's on the move.
Nicholson has 100% taken Holmes spot. But Holmes and Bullock coming off the bench was some BIG punch going forward, Did Holmes interchange with J Clark at 13?
Riley Dean i didn't even notice on the pitch most of the time and i hardly remember him touching the ball. Williams Class, Thewlis class, Ratchford class, Currie has a good solid game. For me next week, KEEP THE TEAM THE SAME, and add Walker to the bench or Wrench.
Great display all round and i hope we bring the same thing next week for Cas

Just watched the game again, Williams and Mulhern could cop a ban.

Mulhern maybe. Williams shouldn’t.

Mikaele looks exactly what we needed. Harrison I thought played very well and hopefully will get better wit match fitness. Wardle and Ashton are developing a good understanding already. Hopefully with improved confidence Matty A will back himself a bit more.
I get that Catalans had a fair few missing but when you think of the number of new players we have integrated in a very short time, this was a good display.
The younger players are building game time and don’t look out of place. Green shots of optimism for me.

a few stats from yesterday

mulhern 26 tck, 5mt, 0 missed 1tb, 16c 88metres
harrison 34 tck, 4mt, 1 missed 2tb, 13c 108metres 1 offload
clark 15 tck, 3mt, 3 missed 1tb, 6c, 46metres 1 offload

Mikaele 16 tck, 2mt, 1 missed 4tb 12c 81metres, 4 offloads
bullock 24 tck 5mt, 0 missed 2tb 13c 108metres 1 offload
holmes 27 tck, 4mt, 0 missed 2tb 6c 60metres

i might dig out some stats to compare holmes workrate in other games at second row, you'd say at first glance the players that switched between 13 yesterday did pretty similar, mopping up work rather than an extra prop. also clark did ten minutes at hooker at the end of the game as well.

Can’t wait to see what impact Mikaele can have next year (even this maybe) when the starting props have put us on the front foot. I can already smell (?) the sort of devastation our runners could have from broken play from one of his offloads.

kasiano and mikaele off the bench

Michaele, Kasiano and Paul Vaughan, opposition teams won't know where to look.

How did Dudson get on yesterday?

100m from 11 carries, 30 tackles, so largely in line stats wise with our props. Didn't particularly standout if I'm honest, but put a decent shift in and he's there to do the grunt work really, Kasiano and Mikaele will be there for impact.

Dudson had a relatively quiet game.

You know, this last few weeks has been such a downer I’d totally forgotten about Vaughan. Can’t wait. I hope he’s got a bit of grunt and niggle about him.

There’s some real quality “go forward” right there. Waited 5 years for it but we’re gonna have a great pack next year.

https://www.rugby-league.com/article/60 ... view-panel Nothing for us from that game has I said earlier thought Williams and Mulhern may have been in trouble.

https://www.rugby-league.com/article/60 ... view-panel Nothing for us from that game has I said earlier thought Williams and Mulhern may have been in trouble.

Well, the A grade he has means if he does the same again, he will get a match ban - so not quite nothing, but glad he hasn't got a ban after putting in a good performance.

Liam Watts picked up a 2 game ban, which is a blow for Cas next week.

I think you are getting a bit giddy after the dizzy heights the team hit against Catalan. Just for clarity I have never used the term bellend, although I may have thought it sometimes on reading some posters.
Just stay away from the blue smarties and have an early night.

There were some really encouraging things in yeterdays game.
The defence was a lot stronger and you could see a lot of effort was going into controlling the attacking player to turn them on their back or to push them back. I have not seen that all season.

Unless I am mistaken since the England game George William's has switched sides. He played on the left yesterday but all season prior to that he has been on the right. If the new left edge is William's, Currie, Wardle and Ashton and they get the combinations right it could be a real threat.

There was always plenty of players to support breaks or chase attacking kicks. Every offload went to a pair of hands rather than a speculative offload ending up on the floor. When we had players running sideways across the defensive line there were players pushing through as options rather than players just standing and watching.

After the Widdop try and injury Catalan had a period of pressure, a Tomkins break, the Langi try and it took 5-10 mins after Widdop went off to compose ourselves but they did that. In previous games there could well have been back to back tries conceded. Catalan also forced a few drop outs and we gave away a few penalties and coped well with the pressure.

It wasn't perfect. We still put quite a few balls on the floor and fluffed 2 on 1 situations.

I am not getting carried away because I think that there will be many bumps in the road but it looked like the players had belief in what they were doing yesterday. It appears there was a commitment to a system that we have not seen for a while.

It was another poster who called you a bellend yesterday LOL - I'm not disagreeing with him/her.

I think it's you who needs to quit the hard core drugs and booze, you posted this two days ago:



BTW, do you still think he should retire or would you give him more time?

I said in August last year that we should not have signed him on as coach . Apart from yesterday when we won well against a weakened Catalan team I have not seen anything to change my mind. In fact he has proved my initial view as correct.
In my view, and it is different to yours, he could have gone about his work of changing the team, evolving it rather than the causing complete chaos, dispiriting all the team, the supporters who paid out handsomely for season tickets and discouraged new supporters to come and watch. The club has had a massive financial hit after 2 years of Covid with debts still to be paid.
I hope he turns round the fortunes of the club moving forward, even if he does, I still will not accept the way he has gone about it.
That's it, we both want what's best for the club but we differ on how it is has been done on the pitch. End of.

Good post and agree with most of what you've said - it would be a bit boring if we agreed on everything though.

Enjoy the rest of the evening and fingers crossed for next week. I'm prepared to look like a bit of a plonker if we get hammered!

(Apologies too for re-quoting that insult - a bit out of order tbh)

What are this club thinking signing Dudson?Have they not learnt?He’s garbage from what I’ve seen of him.

Thought Matautia could be in trouble for dissent after his sin binning.

He deliberately took an eternity, to walk off as slowly as he could and at one stage turned around and walked back a few paces, before realising it would be best to just leave the field, which he did.

We'll get plenty of impact from Mikaele, Vaughan & Kasiano, he works hard and does the simple stuff, I'm not as enthused at his signing as I am the other three, but if he can be consistent and put in a good 50 minute performance, that's good enough. At the weekend he had 30 tackles, 11 carries for 100m and no errors (but 1 penalty against), not earth shattering, but better stats wise than any of our props on the day bar Harrison. (I know stats don't tell the whole story).

He was alright, (as was seguier) I just think our group of props were better for a change.

How did Riley Dean do ? I didn't see the match ,didn't hear him mentioned on SL show & the radio commentary was next to useless.

Solid but not spectacular. It was obvious that Powell wanted Williams dictating play (maybe to build his confidence a bit?) but Dean generally did okay I thought. Some good defence apart from letting Langi steal a try from dummy half, but that was understandable as Dean and Nicholson only have a few first team games between them.

Splendid.