Rest holdsworth if not 100% like rovers have dobson. He was ineffective against hudds when not fit

Absolutely. If we can't beat London without him, then we should pack up now.

its a strong squad, possibly the strongest of the season, we should beat london with or without holdsworth. the players are capable its down to attitude, but i fear as its an away match it could be a bit of a battle like last seasons game was

Hopefully DJ will be fine for Saturday.

On Green I agree it's a shame he misses out but it's a long season and easter is coming, no point in burning a young lad out. As for Galea he's steadily been getting better and deserves his place in the 17 for me.

Don't see how we can burn a young lad out when he is playing so few minutes. Not doing 80 minutes every week is he.

Plus this is the sort of game he should be playing in. A game against one of the weaker sides in the comp albeit a must win game.

I don't remember Holdsworth being so 'injury prone' at Salford. I know Gentle has said this time it's a bug but he is quickly becoming Darren Anderton.

I agree Mark , Disappointed he's been dropped as before his injury , He was one of our better forwards.

He took a late hit at saints which concussed him and is still causing him problems.

Why? It's this sort of arrogant , unsubstantive attitude that seems to get into the players heads as well that sees us consistently lose games against "lesser" opposition. If we go there without DJ or a fully fit DJ and turn up thinking that we're somehow just entitled to the win , you know what , we won't get it. Our squad quality as proved up to now is no more than average and we need the whole (team) to be greater than the sum of it's parts to win this sort of game , ie , we need to go in with the right attitude , the one we display when up against "better" teams.

Not sure about that. I agree he's been getting better, but it depends how we balance the team. If we're going with a prop at loose man that leaves 3 second row spots. IMO even though he's been getting better he's still 4th behind Westerman, Tickle, and Whiting. Unless one of those plays loose forward I don't think there's a place for him.

So you don't think that we're better than London.

No, I really don't, I think we're about equal, on our day we can play well, but our day doesn't seem to come around very often in recent times.

If DJ is fit and the forwards decide they actually want to play then we'll win, but if our second row are as lazy as they have been in recent games (attacking wise) then we're f'd.

Have a look at the table. There's not a lot in it but if we go there thinking we're a big club and have the wrong attitude - and we've plenty of previous for that - then we'll lose. Dorn , Gower and Randall have plenty of guile and will play if we let them.

Results over the past several seasons would seem to indicate that you're badly mistaken. Still, given how 'uninterested' our players are at the moment and our 'lazy' second row I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate not to be bottom of the table with a huge negative points difference.

Problem is, 2 of the 4 pivots haven't trained all week.(McDonnell & Holdsworth), is there any wonder our attack is flat,and has no cohesion?- and yet these 2 are in the 19 man squad.

Don't waste your time Kosh. Let's just join the negative outlook club on this forum. Even if we were top they'd find something to moan about. And before they come back with a smart answer, I'll agree we're not where we want to be but unlike some I have faith in our club to get things right.

I'm not sure it's negativity more like concern based on the reality of any number of 'winnable' away games over the last few seasons.

No Holdsworth or McDonnell today

I admire your optimism, but fans are rightly in my opinion, questioning, the facts, that we haven't seen any improvement on the previous season.

Well forums are about opinions and I accept that others will have differing ones to mine, and that others will agree with me.
I'd sooner be optimistic than pessimistic (whether its misplaced optimism is another matter).

Very true . The "Rose tinted" brigade will tell us different though .
Off the pitch improvements may have been made . On it slightly down on last season IMO .
A very big 10 days coming up for our playoff aspirations . 3 games we can win,but will we?
Hearing that Holdsworth and McDonnell may be out today . Holdsworth`s health is starting to become a concern.

Crap if true.

Indeed. Would put Horne to FB if he weren't our best available HB. Whiting to FB, halves = Horne +? Heremaia? All unravelling. Is Crookes back yet?

smailes on twitter says they are both major doubts at the moment but not definately out

IF as it appears, two of our pivots haven't trained all week, why have them in the 19 man squad?

PG said last week after the Huddersfield game, Holdsworth hadn't trained all week, if the pivots don't train & practice during the gameweek, then are selected to play,that's why our attack looks drab.