I suppose looking back over the weeks since we lost McIlorum to injury, it was particularly highlighted to me in the Saints and Wire game what a great loss Mike was. Not only was he coming into great form and for me outshining Riddel, but he also gave us that little bit of something different than piggy with his contrasting style.

Obviously loosing him made piggy have to do longer game time than he normally would, plus the fact that when Riddel did eventually have to go off are halfback combination had to completely alter a long with one of are centre's switching position.

It'll be a huge plus when Mike does return to the side due in some respect to his great defensive capabilities, and the fact that we wont have to do so much chopping and changing throughout matches.

He was coming along a treat and if we look at his preformence in the Hull KR away game when out good mini run started he had an fantastic game. Alot of people talked about how Sam Tomkins changed that game when he came on and he did but MM had just as big an impact on it aswell and we've really missed him these past few weeks.

His game is perfectly suited to the business end of the season because he's 100% committed, tough as they come and him being on the bench means we don't have to start shifitng the whole side around just to get Riddell a rest.

I really do hope he's back soon. Bailey said in his blog on the official site last week that he was a few weeks off so with any luck he'll be back for the Hull game.

I agree. As I said on a previous thread all our tries came when Riddell was on the field. If we could have brought Micky Mac I'm sure he would have tightened us up around the ruck, particularly defensively.

He has been better than Roby this season IMO.

He may be fit for Cas possibly, his injury was said to have him otu for about 6 weeks, and that'd be around then.

I agree completely about having missed him.

Why dont we give the lad that wears number 9 in the reserve team at least he knows what he is meant to do there unlike using anybody there.

I'd love to see Sam Gee get a go. He's played well in the reserves this season.

i ve said for along time about macca been awsome the last six games before he got injured he was superb , i was quite shocked when piggy had 1 good game alot of ppl on here was saying send macca out on loan lol could nt beleive what i was reading

Do you think he is ready?

Probably not but Sam Gee is 22 years of age. I'm not a fan of changing a lot of positions around to accommodate one substitution.

I'd like to see Gee given an opportunity from the bench.

I did not know about him being that age. I suppose you could say it's now or never really.

I wouldnt go as far as saying he was awesome, getting a bit carried away there. Yes he had been playing well. His best game was KR away, but there were times when him coming on has changed games for the worse, one of them being Celtic because when he came on we lost all momentum.

He is a very good prospect for the future and he will only get better, but if what we was seeing from him before he got injured was 'awesome', then I hope he will improve and be our regular hooker coming from the bench for the next few years.