Cam Smith's problems are more fundamental than that. Everything he does is lacking in dynamism. He makes a lot of tackles, but often as second/third man in and he does not stop attackers in their tracks. He is also one of of our many forwards who cannot run the ball in hard. His 'ball handling' is too slow and actively hurts the team half the time.

I just don't see that reducing the number of tackles would make much difference unless he completely changes his physique and approach in the off season to focus on less involvement but with far more impact. If I was Arthur that's what I'd look to try to do, but I think its a long shot for working. I can't remember seeing a forward lacking in oomph suddenly turning his whole style of play around at 26 years old.

We're not going to turn the first team around by pretending that player's faults are because of other players in the squad and not to their own deficiencies. Same goes for Oledzki, Newman and everyone else. If they want to be part of the turnaround they all have to look to themselves first. This off season promises to be the hardest for years for a whole bunch of our squad, and some will not make the grade even with that.

Agree with all that, I think smith’s idea was a lightweight pack,extremely mobile and attempt to run big opposition packs off the park. The first half of the home league game against saints we achieved that and dominated saints. Second half we were well beaten and ultimately lost the game. Not certain if we ran out of steam or saints wised up to the situation.

I wouldn’t believe everything that set of clowns say.

Its actually scarier if its not true that we're spending quite a bit less than others. It means that a team that is lower-end mid table costs the same as the very top. Which means we've royally messed up our cap spend with some players earning way more than they would elsewhere. That makes it harder to shift contracted players as they'd likely face a pay cut, and gives us less room to manoeuvre.

I don't expect us to sign a Brodie Croft level player for next year in terms of interest, but forwards are generally less exciting signings anyway.

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uncle Tony tried that in 2006 and failed miserable.

The one glimmer of hope I’m hanging onto is that in Blease’s first press conference he started going on about our pack under Graham
Murray, I’m sure he gets it and will try to make changes as and when cap gets freed up.

Would love to know what the actual cap spend is and what Wigan are paying all those props and what we are paying ours. The other big advantage is Bevan French who is worth every penny. He’s so far ahead of 90% of SL players it’s ridiculous.

Oledski will benefit from playing fewer minutes but he also needs to cut out the volume and regularity of very basic errors even when not fatigued.