Powell's reasons for his absence:

When asked, Powell says he expects Longstaff to be putting pressure on those ahead of him but that he is "a little bit below where he should be."

"I’ve sat down with Ellis and explained to him in great detail what I want him to do a couple of times," he said.

"There’s a few players under pressure in our team and I think Ellis should be there or thereabouts.

"At the moment, he’s a little bit below where he should be and I’m challenging him to step up.

"I understand why they're asking the question, but Ellis has got to do his part of the bargain and step up to the plate."

Not what I wanted to read. Some players need to turn their SatNavs on to find where the ballpark is, never mind the plate.

We need to be careful of hyping up this lad. It is unfair on him and Powell. It is a big tough world in the forwards if you are 19 ...coming up to 20.
It is a bit of a natural reaction to call for "bring in the youngsters" when all around are struggling.

I agree with you Smiffy and as long as Powell and his staff are encouraging the lad and setting him realistic targets to show that there is a genuine pathway then we can ask no more......or can we?

We've been poor across the park but (and we've spent some money here) we've been really poor at SR so perhaps rather than limiting his message to Longstaff selecting him in place of Holmes or Currie even for a game or two might have been effective

I think that one of the main reasons for the "we must pick Longstaff idea" is more to give Currie/Holmes/Hughes a kick up the bum.
I do not think he is ready to play regular second row at first team level yet. Mind you, I would love to be proved wrong.

Ellis has got to step up to the plate? I read this as "I'm not going to drop the guy I brought over with me from cas even though he's been amongst our worst performers".

It's not necessarily we must pick Longstaff from me. However, if that's the justification from Powell to not picking him, then there's [imore[/i justification for not picking those in front of him.

Bit weird that's how you read it to be honest.

Longstaff is very much a work in progress and mentally and physically he still has much to do, but the raw talent is there.

Keen as we are to have a team filled with talented academy products better to have a slow burn than a burn out - Harvey Livett springs to mind, a player who it could be argued was far more skilful than any of our backrowers aside from Currie, but who seemed to plateau very quickly.

Contrary to many posters, Powell thinks Longstaff is not at the level of Currie and Holmes - even in their current form.
He's the coach, his call.
He can see Longstaff has the potential, and if Longstaff addresses the areas that he needs to improve on then he's in a better place to challenge.
I've no strong view as I dont understand enough of the technicalities to judge, but one thing you always get with youngsters is energy and enthusiasm.
Our 2nd rowers are struggling in a struggling team. A lot of this is 'in the head' - confidence is part of that, and also controlling nerves.
Just got to work hard, but do things to relax.

Harvey Livett is an interesting one. I really rated him and agree that he had great skills (along the lines of Currie). I always got the impression that it was 'attitude' that was the issue. Shame really.

I too think that Currie and Holmes (even in their current form) are quite a bit ahead of Longstaff. However, Longstaff is likely to improve and things change. At the moment I would pick Currie & Holmes.

Disagree re Livett. He lost confidence after Price dropped him following the 2018 CC final. He played well since leaving us and has signed for Huddersfield next season. Still only 25. Good player.

I agree, but his career at Wires had stalled. He got a new deal, had a lousy CC final and never kicked on. I hope he does well at Huddersfield because the game needs less robots and more footballers but, for whatever reason, his career in the P&B was flatlining.

Has he done well? He's muddled along from what I can see.

I agree on face value that he might have kicked on but "muddled along" is a bit stingy. However, he's a regular starter and perhaps if he does go to Huddersfield Watson presumably thinks he can get a tune out of him as he has the talent

KR fans really wanted to sign him permanently, Salford fans are ticked off he's leaving. He's highly rated by those two teams.

Will be interesting to see how he goes next year in what should be a pretty good side.

He's obviously never going to be world-class but I think he's good enough for us and we should have kept him.

Livett didn`t fit in with Price`s masterplan of 5 drives and then an high kick to the corner.

If that didn`t work, then Plan B was 5 drives and then a kick to the corner.

Livett had too much flair, and as such was regarded as a maverick risk taker, by Price.

Anyone who kicked on tackle four or made a cut out pass was considered a maverick risk-taker under Price

I think Livett should have held up his hand and admitted he wasn’t fit for the CC final. Ahead of his injury, he was in the best form of his life.
I’d have him back at wire in a heartbeat, can’t think of another better player to have come off your bench.

I think a lot of the younger players get to this stage where they have to make a jump up. We don't really know if Powell is saying Longstaff is 'not listening' or needs to develop his game further, either way he will need to kick on if he is to cement a regular place under Powell - so I don't suppose it matters. At least he is still pretty young and is not under real pressure to deliver in contrast to quite a few of the senior players who will undoubtedly be on their way by the end of the year.

Who would be a professional RL player ?

The truth is most of us on here would love to have had the skill, application and opportunity….to get battered every week and get slagged off on fan’s forums if our form ever dropped below 100%. To this day i find myself walking down Lord St imagining me putting a little dink over an oncoming pedestrian (a la K Shelford) before rounding them to plonk the ball under the sticks (traffic lights).

this must be a different harvey livett to the one i watched playing first team

Can't see the value of discussing a young player in public. Good coaches should encourage young players and Powell hardly did that. Always rated Livett but as a centre.

This is a common pattern with our young players but I also wonder how much of it is people overrating them from a small sample size of games early on.
The more first team appearances a player has the more they reveal how good/bad they really are. With Livett, the more games he played the more the ratio of good games to anonymous games seemed to worsen. We had the same pattern with Kevin Penny, Rhys Evans and Dec Patton. These guys all had their own fans making excuses for them and blaming other people but they stopped producing good performances for us and in the end time runs out.

I think Livett is better than those other three and will be able to have a decent career as a middling SL level player. He's better than what we have now and could be a starter in our team. But I don't think he's starting quality for a team who wants to compete for GFs.

Fair points. I think with young players fans have a tendency to focus on the good games and ignore the bad at the start, thinking that the bad games will stop happening over time.

I think with Livett though we didn't give him enough time. He was poor in the CC Final (also got injured in the game before) but was only 21 at the time and only played for us 15 times after that, and a lot of those were from the bench.

Sometime after Longstaff breaks into the team on a regular basis, he will end up going through a bad patch. I feel you should stick with players for a time to see if they come through it. Dec Patton, for example, never did but at least we knew for sure he wasn't good enough.

Penny, Evans, and Patton all played over twice as many games for Warrington as Livett did.

He was in the first team squad for 3 years and in those three years played around 50% (45) of the games, I'd say that was long enough. At the end of the day he left of his own accord as he wanted first team rugby, I would have been delighted to see him stay as part of the squad, his versatility is valuable, but the fact is he wanted a first choice spot in the back row. The move was best for club and player, despite a drop in form of Currie and Holmes not living up to the billing yet, Livett isn't good enough in my mind to be a first choice back rower for a side with top 4 aspirations, whether he is better than Currie and Holmes presently isn't really the debate, he isn't good enough for a regular spot in the 13 at a top 4 club.

Be very interesting to see how he gets on at Huddersfield and whether he will be first choice - they have McQueen, Yates and Jones ahead of him in the 11-13 positions.