Who would you like to see in the halves against dons, if radford uses the first team including crooks & miller then who would you want to start, i thought:

Horne & Miller - Dons
Horne & Rankin - Bradford
Miller & Rankin - Rovers
Horne & Heremaia - Fev - Just to fill this in



Dragons: Horne & Miller i think it will probably be these guys.

The bradford match is the 2nd pre session match?

Sorry lad got them mixed up

Why isn't radford keen on miller?

Your mixed up with Holdsworth bud....

Hates him. Trying to ship him back in the same skip Talanoa is arriving in. We've decided instead to use a hooker in the halves and follow rovers masterplan.

I do worry that in articles that I have read that Heremia is still been talked about as a halfback option.

Especially as he's our best 9.

Indeed , Leave him there !!

Deliberately provoking? Houghton is by far our best when used properly.

For any success this year we need consistency in the halves. Unfortunately for Horne he won't be able to give us the 22+ games we need, so it has to be Miller & Rankin for me.
Obviously injuries can occur to anyone, but I think we're more a chance of getting 20+ out of each of them.

So I'd just play them as often as I could, friendlies or otherwise.

I prefer Heremaia too to be honest!

Must of been a good 6 8 10 games at least last year that Aaron came on and we instantly looked better. Aaron was sharper, asked more questions of the defence, got our forwards on the front foot better and and his passing is far superior!
That said Dannys form got better later and when ever he came back on after a spelling he was much better
I think we'd be better starting with Aaron and bringing Danny off the bench!

Azza is better going forward but iveno doubt Danny will become a far better player Han he is now

Danny v Azza is the same as Jamie v Shannon. People see different things.

For me Danny and Jamie have got the speed off the mark with the scoot. Azza and Shannon have got the better rugby brain and the better overall game.

Danny has poor distribution and his passing can be awful. Jamie often has poor positional play - often having to run to gather a kick downfield whereas Shannon is there to catch it.

The two younger lads need to be soaking up the experience of the old heads and they will both be truly great players in the coming years.

All IMHO of course.

Has to be Rankin and Miller, its a no brainer imo.

In the Heremaia Houghton debate, Houghtons distribution is awful at times and jumps outta the ruck at pretty much every play but his D is up there with the best in the team. Heremaias distribution is quick and accurate and picks when to jump outta the ruck at the right times and his D is pretty solid. I'd always start with Heremaia ang bring Houghton on as a more explosive 9.

Interesting. Danny is 25 now so certainly younger than Azza at 31. In the other pair , Shannon is being referred to as the "veteran" but he's only 26. I think if Danny was going to develop his distribution , passing and game management skills it would have happened by now. He's a great work horse and team player but without halfbacks we've badly missed Heremaia's style of game and skill levels when he's off the field or , ironically having to play halfback. For me it's Heremaia every time and we'll need Cunningham to replace him if he makes the grade. We should also have a contingency plan because whilst Houghton will be here for many more years we shouldn't be relying on him as our main/only acting half or diverting half backs into the role as in the past.

Cunningham all around game is excellent, I think he will make a better hooker than Houghton, think he will get a few games this year and step in next year.

We've never replace swain properly and has had a far greater impact on us than losing and not replacing cooke

That's a moot point but the importance of a hooker that's intelligent, can manage the game and has the skills to move the ball quickly and accurately to the right players at the right time has rarely if ever been better demonstrated than by Cameron Smith. He's a freak but he's what we should be aiming at.

Don't even know we're to start with that, Surley it's a wind up?

Dig up the assist stats for the seasons 03-07, find the season review DVDs for these periods, pretty much everything we did was through Cooke, and it was successful. When we lost and didn't replace Cooke we overnight turning into a different team, and still 7 years later don't like recovering.

Swain was a brilliant player, smart and an absolute workhorse, but didn't have as much as a direct impact on the huge percentage of Hulls try's that Cooke did.

You might want to watch a few of those games again and take a look at why Cooke had the freedom to play like he did.

Swain was every bit as important to that side as Cooke. Arguably more so but not definitely.

Sorry I'm not having that, that's not a slight on Swain or doubting the influence Swain had on Cooke, but our downfalls biggest factor was losing Cooke. It's all opinion but I think it's safe to say lack of creativity, someone who can find a pass to convert possession into going over the line is what Hull have missed the most.

Stats don't tell the full story by any means, but if you class 04, 05 and 06 as our best period of the past decade as I would, Cookes assist stats are:

04-21
05-29
06-24

Like I say don't tell the full story, but then again think of the number of try's set up by Cooke on that left hand side that he didn't directly assist, and what offered with his kicking game his influence was huge.

The closest any other Hull player to this in terms of assists was Dykes in 2008 with 13 I believe, when you consider this and our general lack of creatively and ability to score try's since Cooke left, it's hard in my opinion to say that any single factor contributed more to our downfall then losing Cooke's creativity (and more importantly not replacing him), however good a player Swain was, which is not in question, he was a beast.

When Cooke played for us at his best and perhaps against us he was one of the most efficient and effective players I've seen. Just about everything he did brought a better than average return. He had a very sharp rugby brain which put him in the right position most of the time and he was able to get that over to those around him as well. His arrogance helped him to shrug off any mistake that he did make and just move on to the next thing whilst carrying on firing out the orders. Hugely influential when with us and hugely missed.

Not a wind up, but my opinion. cooke was a very important player for us and has been badly missed since, however, swain carried that team and created the go forward that players like cooke needed. It's no coincidence that cooke's career went down the pan when he didn't have that calibre of hooker to play off for the rest of his career.