I imagine that the delayed return for home games is down to the pitch having it's yearly maintenance

I remember, what, about a year ago on this forum someone reckoned we'd be so pleased to watch live sport that there'd be 15000 at the DW when crowds were allowed back. I thought that was crazy talk then, and I still do.

I do not have a down on Shorrocks. I think that he is a good young player who will make his future in the game. I see him a bit like Greg Burke though. He is a solid defending, ball playing forward who could add something different to an attack. Unfortunately he is being used as one of our clone middles or as a speculative centre.
For years now we have been in the position of throwing too many youngsters in at the same time because our senior players have not been up to the job.

I wouldn't get on Shorrocks' back; he's made a good contribution to the squad generally, and obviously will give it a shot wherever Lam asks him to play. But certainly no harm in giving him a rest if Tommy is fit, or even to give KPP a bit more game-time.

I must admit at the start of all this I did feel like we’d see a little boom when people could go back but then I didn’t think we’d be in this position as a country 14 months later. All the talk at the start was as though we’d just get a magic date where Covid disappeared and we all went crazy on a big weekend bender and just got back to normal. It became clear after a couple of months that it wouldn’t be the case and as we see now and will likely continue to see, things will be relaxed and tightened back up and we’ll be living with some form of restrictions or preventative measures for a long while to come. There will never be that magic date of things becoming totally normal and that means now it will be a tough ask to even get back to pre covid crowds, let alone see a surge in people desperate to get to games.

Yes, sadly, I agree.

I don’t blame Shorrocks for struggling at centre and when he’s played in the middle he’s added to the team. I don’t think either are his position though, well not his position just yet. He could at some point make it as a loose forward but like Smithies, I’d like to see his opportunities come in the second row, where he can run a little wider, against smaller bodies and not have to get beat up by guys twice his size. Lams insistence that Smithies and Shorrocks are ‘middles’ baffles me. Throughout time young forwards coming in to a side will be eased in gradually and play some second row before moving to lose forward later in their careers. Even the greats like Andy Farrell and Paul Sculthorpe started in the second row. Lockers got shifted around between 6 and second row when he started and there are countless others.

I don’t know if Lam just thinks having umpteen youngsters in the middle of the field will bring energy but it’s been overkill since he came. We can’t keep having so much inexperience in the middle of the field. Guys like Isa and Bateman should be going in at loose forward before Shorrocks and Smithies.

Baffles me why Bateman isn't playing at 13.

Slightly off topic, Brad O'Neill (Widnes) and James McDonnell (York) are getting good reviews . O'Neill made sixty-one tackles last week and I saw a video clip of a break McDonnell made over the weekend, he looks to have put some decent size on him.

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Hearing very good things about O’Neil from Widnes fans, hopefully he can carry his form into super league

He's not a 13 for me. I'd prefer him on the right. I'd prefer us to go with a ball playing 13 or a prop 13 and he's neither.

I’d at least like to see us try Bateman at 13. He isn’t that extra prop and he’s not a Lockers style ball player but he’d bring a different edge to the position. He runs at gaps not bodies and I think he’d go great catching out the big props in the middle and getting us on the front foot. His offload game around the middle would also be really useful and if you got French supporting around that area we could really hurt teams.

We won’t know for sure until he gets a run there but I’m confident we’d see an even better player over time.

I've been pretty disappointed with Bateman's performances since he came back. Not a patch on when he left us.

He doesn't look quite as invested to me - at times he looks to be going through the motions. If his decision last year was based purely on rugby he'd still be in Australia - just hope this doesn't mean he's demotivated now he's back at Wigan.

How many ex-Wigan players have come back to us from the NRL and performed to the level they played prior to leaving us. Not many at all, the only one I can think of is Tommy.

Funnily enough some of those players have then gone on to perform better once they've left Wigan the 2nd time.

Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc

Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc'" Those statistics don't take into consideration things like 2 terrible intercept passes, one leading directly to a try, and an horrendous non-attempt at a tackle that led to another in the last game for example. Some things don't quantify statistically very easily.

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc'" Those statistics don't take into consideration things like 2 terrible intercept passes, one leading directly to a try, and an horrendous non-attempt at a tackle that led to another in the last game for example. Some things don't quantify statistically very easily.

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc'" I'm sure Bateman at 50% is better than the majority of his peers, though I think those are the points awarded for the fantasy game. I did it a couple of years ago - think I remember you get 4 or 5 points for an offload! 64 offloads across 8 games seems a bit dodgy to me as well...

Quote ="Rogues Gallery"Strange isn't it. If you look at the Superleague site stats Bateman is overall top player when they consider all facets of the game, tries, metres, carries, tackle busts, errors, penalties etc, etc etc https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/playe ... al&dir=asc'" I'm sure Bateman at 50% is better than the majority of his peers, though I think those are the points awarded for the fantasy game. I did it a couple of years ago - think I remember you get 4 or 5 points for an offload! 64 offloads across 8 games seems a bit dodgy to me as well...

The expectations being placed on Bateman are crazy. He’s not at his best but even then he’s knocking out fantastic numbers. He won’t walk through teams here now because he didn’t do that before, regardless of him having a good spell in the NRL. He needs to cut out the errors and stop moaning at the ref and once he does, he’s the least of our worries.

I agree to a certain extent. He seems to thrive when he has something to prove and perhaps hasn't been able to find the same motivation now he's a big fish, so to speak. He seems more frustrated than anything else. After he didn't even make an attempt at the tackle for the last Salford try his body language wasn't good. He hung his head like he knew it was poor but didn't know what to do about it.

His game is all about every second of the match being the most important. Relentless will to win. He somehow needs to find a way to duplicate that attitude as a star player in the same way as he did as a plucky underdog or the Pom who's too small to succeed in the NRL.

I do think it’s a mental thing. If anything I think he might be trying too hard to show he’s an even better player than the one which left and it’s leading to silly errors like the offload for the Livett try. I think he thinks that to show he’s worth a marquee deal he needs to add more facets to his game than what he had before he left and absolutely dominate games but he was great before and he’ll settle down. If he wasn’t making masses of ground and 30-40 tackles a game I’d be worried but he is.

I think the personal side of his life will also have had an effect. I’m sure he’ll have prioritised putting a lot of energy in to his family, I believe he’s moved in to a new property and has had his partner come over from Oz and when you think that she won’t have met his family before, that must be a crazy mix, especially when you factor in all the covid restrictions. The lads head must be spinning but he’ll settle.

Quote ="MadDogg"I'm sure Bateman at 50% is better than the majority of his peers, though I think those are the points awarded for the fantasy game. I did it a couple of years ago - think I remember you get 4 or 5 points for an offload! 64 offloads across 8 games seems a bit dodgy to me as well...'" https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/howtoplay 4 points for an offload so the 64 points is made up from 16 offloads over the games played.

Quote ="MadDogg"I'm sure Bateman at 50% is better than the majority of his peers, though I think those are the points awarded for the fantasy game. I did it a couple of years ago - think I remember you get 4 or 5 points for an offload! 64 offloads across 8 games seems a bit dodgy to me as well...'" https://fantasy.superleague.co.uk/howtoplay 4 points for an offload so the 64 points is made up from 16 offloads over the games played.

He's the second top second rower in superleague stats in the following, carries, metres made and tackle busts. He's top for tackles made.
Unsurprisingly the top second rower is that player too small for international rugby league

Liam Farrell.



I think the expectations from some fans is just a bit too high, and yes he had a poor game by his own standards on Saturday, but he still got through a ton of work, same applied to Sam Powell, four silly penalties, all for ball strips.

The perception that Bateman has been poor is a combination of a number of factors.

1). The expectation of fans is incredibly high. If he doesn’t perform like a superstar every week some will criticise.

2). He no doubt feels pressure to perform like a superstar leading him to try and force things a bit.

IMO he’s still the too class second row he always was and should be one of the first names on the team sheet.