If we can’t find a way to integrate French and Field, change the coach. We are blessed to see them in our shirt at the same time.

I’ve said this before on here.

If we could bring in a proven top quality 6 then I’d reluctantly sacrifice one of Field or French for them, I’d prefer to keep French of the 2 though to play fullback.

The reality is both are fullbacks and we are doing our best to accommodate them both in the team to the detriment of utilising French in his best position.

The way we play French isn’t a winger in our system either. He’s a wonderful attacking player but he lacks the physicality in his carries which means he gets dominated in the tackle when carrying against an organised set line.

Given the lack of quality halves about and the demand for the ones that are available I don’t think we will be seeing either go anywhere for the next couple of years and we will persist with this style, and hopefully French can develop into the 6 role as he gets more exposure to it, however it will be to the detriment of the team in my opinion whilst he does.

It potentially could work but not how French is playing the position. He is very rarely taking the line on, unless it’s in easy games, against busted/weakened teams, so if the opposition wanted a way of nullifying him, we and he have found it for them.

Still come back to the 60 minutes in the Leigh game just before Easter. By far our most fluid and incisive attacking performance and its not as if we'd had 8 weeks to practice that lineup like we have done with the current one.

I think we need to switch back to that lineup and have French defend in the line.

Crazy suggestion. It's up to the coaching team to make the best out of both of them.

Quite often French is receiving the ball with a defender already on him because we're so slow out of the ruck. It was the same with Smith on Friday (Hull's line speed was superb, I thought). There is no one in the league better than French at running at a broken line but we never give him the opportunity.

Against Hull KR we made 20 offloads and made a ton of breaks from them, especially through French and KPP. I think we have the 2nd lowest offloads in the league despite us having Mago, KPP, King etc. who can offload at will. Clearly a coaching tactic but I don't know why we are so afraid to play off-the-cuff.

We need a quality No6. Hampshire & Cust are not good enough. If the price to pay is losing French or Field, then so be it, although I'd rather retain both and have French on the wing and Field at full back, with Field moving to stand off occasionally if there's a knock to either the stand-off or Smith and French filling in at full back.

The problem is, who is of the same star quality as Field or French, and a 6, who is available

I think it's up to the coaches to work out how to get the best from French at stand off.

They have decided to play him there to get his hands on the ball more - however it's pointless if he's not using his main attacking threat while he has hands on the ball.

At times we look as though we have no structure or shape at all and i think even a top class 6 would would be made to look ordinary with the way the team shapes up.

Compare to Leigh, they play to make use of their strengths,7, 9, 8,, Charnley, hard running props (who had been discarded elsewhere) who make good ground from their line. They play to a structure, they run hard, get some momentum, Lam comes round late and Asiotai is a great ball playing prop who puts doubt in the mind of defenders and makes gaps. Dare i say it, Lam is looking like a far better coach than Matty at the moment.

If we had a similar approach with Smithies or Mago playing a ball playing role, and had French coming into the line like Lam, with Field, KPP, Nsemba out of the back we would have the advantage of far greater pace and options to straighten up or go out to the wing. But we just don't do it, we just seem to shunt the ball across the line and hope French plays a cut out, high risk line ball to the wing.

I really wonder what we do in training other than play up the middle, tire the opposition out and wait until they are knackered and get Field or French to scare them with pace and pass it to Miski on the wing when a defender is having a breather - which seems to be our tactic. And yes it does work alot of the time - but relies on us not playing one of the better teams who we can't tire out as easily, or being sloppy ourselves and not completing enough to tire them out.

I do feel we need an outside view looking in on the team at our attacking structure and giving some alternate opinions. It's not beyond a good coach to build a really good, repeatable attacking shape around Smith and French's pace and footwork in the halves.

.

Can’t work out why French doesn’t swap into the full back role in certain attacking sets, gets wider and get the ball at full pace.

He need to use him more creatively.

I thought that was going to be an option with Powell on the bench on friday, have him and O'Neill on and use French wider

Penrith often has Yeo playing at first receiver, then on to Cleary to distribute. This allows Jerome Luai to run wider with more space. Bevan is more than capable of playing a Luai type role. If Smithies pay the Yeo role, and Smith plays the Cleary role, we should be able to have Bevan running wider with the option of the long or short pass to wing or centre. Cleary has the option of using Luia, Edwards, or a second rower. If we attack to our left, we could run a similar play with Smith having the option of passing to Bevan, Farrell or Field. Speed to burn out wide and play of indecision in the defence’s minds.

I get what you are saying, but let’s not simplify the issue. Comparing Smith, French and Smithies to Clearly, Luai and Yeo and their respective abilities is a bit of a stretch.

But the opposition isn't NRL standard either so they don't need to be.

It works as a principle.

I did think that when I was proposing it.

I personally do not see Smithies or indeed anyone currently at the club who could fill the Yeo role.

Possibly Shorrrocks but still not convinced he has the all round game to be a regular starting 13 for a club hoping to be in contention for trophies year in year out.

I think O’Neil could be. He’s played plenty of #13. I get what he’s saying here and have thought the key to the French/Field conundrum could be a ball playing #13

Yeo, IMO, is the best 13 in world rugby right now, so complaining that Wigan haven't got anyone quite as good is asking for rather a lot...

It puzzles me why all the blame for our supposedly poor attack gets laid on French despite his attacking returns being very impressive since moving to stand off. I know it's not ideal, and I know it's not his natural position and a role like stand off takes time to learn but I also don't think he's doing a terrible job.

15 direct try involvements (mostly assists) since moving to 6 is pretty impressive and comparable with the best halves in the competition. I can see why Matt Peet doesn't want to move French onto the wing because we will lose that creativity by having him in a non creative position and his first 6 games he played on the wing this year hardly saw him scoring for fun. We need that creativity from a half and we didn't get it from Cust early in the year, that's why French to 1 and Field to 6 was the call from a significant number of fans.

Ultimately French's try involvements are impressive. Jai Field's try involvements have been slightly better since French moved to 6 too. It's pretty clear though that Smith's form has dipped though and that's obviously a concern. I'm not sure you can put that all down to French though. Good halves work with makeshift halfback partners at times during their careers and the best ones still produce the goods. They can still work their edge and create tries even if they don't get much input from their halfback partner. Even if French was the worst 6 imaginable we still have Field at fullback and some excellent players on our left edge. French has created plenty of tries for Miski without any involvement from Smith. I don't recall Smith making many opportunities for Marshall in the same way.

I'm not going in the other direction and arguing that Smith is somehow a problem. I don't think it's ever been that simple. Lets be realistic here. Our attack might not be too fluid but it wasn't at the start of the season when we had Cust and Smith in the halves. We were inconsistent then. We're inconsistent now. We had a tendency to overplay then. We have a tendency to overplay now.

We actually average more points per Super League game with French at stand off than we did before he moved there. Before the Hull FC game we'd scored over 20 points in 6 consecutive Super League game. Prior to that we'd only scored over 20 points in 2 consecutive games.

We've never had a consistently good attacking game this year. We've had moments. We've had games where things have clicked but at no point has it been consistently good. It's a season-long issue and I don't think you can really point the finger at individuals or even just the halves here.

For all the complaining about our attack we are still the second highest points scorers in the league and but probably be pushing top with a better goal kicker.

We've been missing our best three props most of the season through injury/suspension, that's been and is our biggest issue

Missing front rowers isn't going to help but it had nothing to do with the performance against Hull. We had more than enough field position and attacking opportunity - it was simply a lack of execution, cohesion and skill.

..and conditions. Both teams were struggling to keep hold of the ball. Neither team kicked their goals (bar the penalty in front of the sticks).

Makes Smith's 45 yard drop goal even more remarkable.

We’ve scored the most tries in SL and lead the league in clean breaks.

French at 6 won’t stop us winning the big games, it’ll be defence particularly in the middle stopping offloads and quick PTBs against the better packs.


Also we get criticised for lack of offloads (again we lead super league) also we give away too many penalties (we’ve conceded the fewest in SL)

We have literally done the second least offloads in the league, not sure where you’ve seen that we lead.

We’ve also done the second most defence (after Wakey), combining that with most tries scored paints a very odd picture

French at 6 is looking a lot better now