Thought Joe was really poor today.

Looks lost as to what his actual role in the side is and, in all honesty, hasn't looked anything like the signing most hoped he would be.

Is he honestly worthy of a place in the 17?

Started to look good, running well with some nice touches. Today he was well off the pace, but so did many.

He has much more to offer.

It would help if your coach played him in the correct position, rather than sticking him in the second row and having a second rower in his position at 13.

Thanks for that. No offence, but this week's award for stating the bleeding obvious is yours.

Needs a good run in one position

Westerman will be one of our leaders in the seasons to come, it must be difficult trying to build on a one up game plan with no dummy runners. In fairness, today our pack was a poor second which only exasperated the problem....Will Sharp on the other hand !!!

Westerman needs some handling practice full stop or run timing. Shocking performance!!

Seemed to get injured just as he was finding his feet. Gets played out of position due to injuries and gets slated. Typical.

I think we were doing the right thing with him playing him in the 2nd row because until he improves his ball handling skills he shouldn't be playing off half or loose man imo.

Then why sign him because he's as good a second row as G Horne was?

A poor second? I don't know where you get that from. The only difference, and the reason Huddersfield won the game, was halfbacks.

His ball handling looked ok when he was at Cas.

Or "as good a 2nd row as G Horne has become since playing under a proper coach"?

hes a very good player and i think some people dont realise that he 1 of only a few in our team that can come up with a match winning play or create something, i agree he needs to improve a few things espcially his 1 on 1 defence but i think if hes given the 13 role next season we will see much better from him

Needs to play regularly at 13 imo and given the freedom to roam in attack rather than being on one side. Also needs to start games but whilst Fitz is here that is not going to happen.

Don't think he has to prove anything regarding his ball handling, he is on a par if not better than most at the club. The fact is we play the kid out of position intentionally or he has to cover when injuries occur like yesterday.

Appreciate he looked off the pace but so did everyone else barring a couple of forwards and Horne (who i thought played well at FB).

I also think that Huddersfields 'up in your face' defence helped us yesterday as you would expect from any/most teams. Halibut constantly let this happen and we didn't adapt our plays to suit, admittedly we lost Phelps which I thought caused disruption in the attacking sense, but we don't have "us plan B" yet do we?

The bottom line is that Westerman now has three years of Super League under his belt and, if anything, has gone backwards since bursting on the scene as a teenager.

Contrast him, to other back-rowers of similar age like Farrell and Mossop at Wigan, Harrison at Warrington, Whitehead at Bradford, Ferguson and Patrick at Huddersfield etc and their careers are all on a firm upward trajectory.

A lot of Castleford fans have questioned Joe's desire...maybe they are right?

Time will tell but I'll be interested to see how he develops into the 13 role if & when Fitz leaves.

We should be playing him in that position now, not leaving it until he is the only option. But as Paul said, while Fitz is still at the club, Westerman will never get anywhere near that loose forward position.

The fact is though that there's no reason for Fitzgibbon to be at 13 - he never played at 13 in Australia, and his game is that of a natural second rower. The only reason he is at loose is because he is an Australian import and so Agar obviously thinks he is more important than the other second rowers. Joe on the other hand is a natural loose forward, rather than a back rower who features at loose. He was compared to Sculthorpe in his junior days, if Sculthorpe or the likes of Sinfield had been used in the second row all their careers then they would probably have looked as average as Westerman is now. I'm surprised you haven't made a bigger fuss about this TBH, it's just absolute stupidity from a stupid coach.

Are you going for a hat-trick?

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the romantic notion that you need to be a ball handler to be at 13 is 20 years old theres only sinfeild who plays anything like that role in the league ,the lock now days is a running tackling exstra prop ,somone who can put loads of effort in thats the modern game three running forwards in the middle and thats why next year tickle will probs go to lock and westerman stay on the fringes where he can use his off load and kicking ,and still be fresh to make an impact ,he hasnt got the workload for loose forward or lock as the aussys call them ,westerman just had a poor game sunday as did a few players too many errors for a team of the giants ability to come away with a win

still think he will be a gud un

Except when Westerman played that role for Cas and was extremely effective. O'Loughlin also plays the same role and again is extremely effective. Lupton also at Crusaders. The only reason that there tends to be back rowers played there is because coaches like Agar are not good enough to utilise the position properly, and think that what you have described is the best thing to do 'because the Aussies do it'. And yes, cod'ead, you can say that's a hat-trick, but it really saddens me to see a club and players with such potential being held back by a moron in charge.