That Pat Richards bloke weren't bad though.

Both Botica and Farrell missed a fair few as well - there are no 10 out of 10 kickers , anything consistently in the 80-90% range is exceptional and there is absolutely no pont in having someone in the team just as a goal kicker they have to be in the team primarily for playing in the position they are.

Will goal kicking cost a game soemwhere down the line - more than likely, just hope it is not in a big game that really matters.

Watching Smith it seems if he lands his first one he does far better - perhaps we need to tell the other player they have to score nearer the posts

instead of out near the touch line!

It would help Harry if we could occasionally score by the sticks.
We scored 6 tries v HKR and 4 against Leeds but only one of the ten was under the crossbar.

We clearly need to score nearer the posts which means a game plan to break the opposition down the middle of the field. Whether this is due to Cust being missing and replaced by Shorrocks I don't know but maybe. The way we take the opposition apart is by going wide and using Jai and Bevan's pace and that seems to be where most of our tries are scored.

Are there any goal kicking props about?

I don't recall seeing one of those for a very long time.....

Ken Gee was pretty good.
No reason to believe that a prop can’t kick if they have the confidence

Suspect Field will be given a go with his return imminent.

Stick with Smith, he’ll come good.

The Roosters had a prop who kicked goals a couple of seasons ago, can't remember who it was, thought it might have been Tetevano I was thinking of, who's now at Leeds, but it's not him.

It was Taukeiaho (not a clue if that spelling is right), who is now at Catalans.

Smith is a good goal kicker we’ve seen him been faultless in the past . He will come good on a more regular basis.

That's kind of my point.

We need props and potentially a SR. Let's not get too concerned with signing someone just because they can kick goals.

I worry about us more when we’re attacking on the opposition line, than I do attacking from our own half and part of that is because we lack a player who can pull the trigger accurately on a pass but also because we lack punch in the forwards or the type of player that is just difficult to stop close to the line. If you have those, your kicks do start becoming easier. Saints get regular try contributions from big, powerful forwards like Walmsley and Sironen but we lack that. It’s something I’m hoping Walters and whoever else comes in can solve and in turn it can improve the kicking percentages.

Good call, when was the last time one of our forwards broke a tackle and scored with a few players on their back?

Havard IIRC, it was a while back like.

We need to find a Lee Crooks from somewhere............

Ha, that's right! I thought it began with T!

Which is what I was saying as well - if you look at the best goal kickers around at the moment most are not positions we need or players we would really be interested in, if we could sign someone who is in a positon we nned to strengthen and happened to be a good goal kicker as well that would be a huge bonus. Perhaps we need to bring in someone who was a top goal kicker on a short term coaching contract to work with anyone in the squad to improve them.

We had Charlie Hodgson a few years ago and it worked wonders with Sam.

Wonder if Deacs fancies a summer job.

We just don’t do it. Mago kills me in that regard. He had chances at HKR the other night to just smash his way over players but he doesn’t do it. We have one forward who scores try’s and that is Faz, but even he doesn’t score what I’d call ‘forwards try’s’. His try’s are from his brilliant line running and support play from deep. We need a forward or two that will just smash his way over the line. I look at Dupree and Walters and they could be those guys.

Byrne is one that frustrates me in that regard, he runs in really hard often from a deeper position but seems to get stopped quite quickly which for someone his size seems a bit odd, Ellis made more ground in contact in the last game which was good to see and hopefully he can continue doing that. Mago too often seems to get the ball standing still rather than bursting onto the ball, he can make reasonable ground but too slowly.

Craig Huby was a goalkicking prop and very often in my fantasy rugby team

in regards to Smith, we have to stick with him. He is striking the ball well, so i'd be more concerned if he was splaying them all over the place and not hitting it well. I liken it to playing golf, the margins between a perfect shot and it missing is miniscule, so for me he is hitting them well, but just a fraction out

It struck me, watching TSS, that as far as scoring under the posts is concerned, it's not just about powerful forwards. How many tries did George Williams score under the posts for us? We don't have halves that can do that right now.

That’s true. We don’t have that ability from hooker either, so it’s an issue across the board. Not sure where Powell pulled that season from where he scored about 11/12 trys close to the opposition line but that seems to be gone now.

I think it might be time to push the button on Harry Smith, at least for the time being. He looks absolutely shot to pieces - I almost feel sorry for him. There may be another conversation to be had about whether it would be best to rest him altogether for a week to give him some headspace - I lost count of the number of passes that went to ground today. Maybe take him out of the firing line against Saints and bring him back for the cup?

I think the goal kicking is hurting his general game, I really do. He isn’t good enough at goal kicking for us to need to let that happen. There’s no history of him having seasons at 80-85%, so you’re not patiently waiting for something to come back, you’re praying he not only starts to improve in the short term but that he actually gets better at it in general and there are no signs of that.

No way I’d take him out of the team but I’d be telling Wardle he’s taking it on from next week and to be putting in the extra practice.