Quote ="Fames"Take your point, Mike, but the 2 "steady Eddies" approach didn't work on Friday against Hull. Powell's injury has rendered impossible a continuation of this combination for the next month at least, so the question now is does Wane revert to Williams at 6 and bring in Logan as bench 9, which is mentioned on the official club website. A very strange comment to post on the club website at this juncture (another deliberate snub to Hampshire?) when the previous week Wane said that Williams was going to be used as a bench 9 for the foreseeable future as that was his best position!'"
The 2 steady Eddies approach did work against Hull though it wasn't pretty by any means but it did work. We still made some errors (that problem was never going to disappear totally between the Cas debacle and last Friday) but we built pressure and forced some dropouts and repeat sets, something we hadn't been doing prior to that game. We also should have won more comfortably than we did but bombed a few tries with dropped passes and a forward pass (just as we have done in previous games). We should have won that game by 3 or 4 tries but for the last pass foul-ups (I said as much to those around me at the game prior to Hull getting their second try) and the finish needn't have been so nervy. As I said though you can't expect us to go from error strewn to flawless overnight and we were better though not at our best (or close to it). We may not have enough improvement to trouble Leeds or Saints in the next few weeks as both look good (Wakey may be a struggle too to be honest) but we are having to climb a long way from a very substandard base performance wise so defeat to Saints and Leeds may not necessarily mean we aren't getting better than we were.
Obviously the injury to Powell means as you say that either Williams or Hampshire should be in the halves now so we won't know whether there was or wasn't a plan to steady the ship as it were with Powell alongside Smith but I wouldn't be surprised to see a continuation of the less risky play we saw last Friday (despite this not playing to the strengths of either Williams or Hampshire) until the rest of the side get in the habit of catching rather than dropping passes.
I agree that the mention of Williams to 6 and Logan on the bench is an odd thing to do on the official site particularly when the squad isn't announced until tomorrow. The seeming contradiction of what was said about moving Williams out of the halves too doesn't look good either. Either he is better at 6 or better at 9 and should be kept in one or the other, switching constantly won't help him or the team. It's a shame really that Wane seems so willing to say what he thinks to the media on any subject when asked. The more tight lipped approach we had from Maguire may have frustrated people looking for more detail but it didn't provide so many proverbial sticks for critics to beat the coach with.
