Was it just me or did the sin binning of Merrin seem a bit harsh. I'm sure referees used to give a penalty and then another 10m if persistent. The SB looked like a little bit of an over reaction

Yep agree with this. Once we have the pack sorted, we can make fairer judgements on the rest of the side, but without a decent platform we're on a hiding to nothing. The pack simply aren't good enough players at the moment, when all is said and done.

The policy of going for tall, fairly mobile forwards hasn't worked well for years, and isn't even working in the reduced interchange environment this year. We don't offer any real variety of threat.

I think what we'll see this year is just a continuation of patchy results, because the pack we have will be able to get up and match opposition every so often, but usually not.

It's a little depressing, but I think your 4-5 year timescale is probably about right when you look at how young the academy prospects are, and of course not everyone will make the step up to open age.

Nah the ref was bang on. You can't start waving your arms and marching towards the ref like that, gobbing off. It sounded like Merrin was still chirping after the penalty was given, and the ref just lost patience - the decision to go to the back pocket seemed to happen after the ref was on the mark?

Is it Kendal? Probably my favourite referee at the moment, but he is an authoritarian and if you show a lack of respect you'll get pinged, as it should be.

I actually couldn't see what Merrin was so angry about tbh.

Id switch Tui & Myler & put Cam Smith as Right side BR.
I also think its time we started blooding Trout & once settled in Sam Walters.
The current incumbents have had numerous chances time for some changes.
I will also add the squad cull needs to run deeper for 2020.

It was holding down, blatantly trying to slow the play the ball down by not letting him get up. Leeds should have had the penalty. However, Merrin's reaction was wrong. He won't be used to the slow play the ball over here. Did our captain go and speak to the referee about the incident?

I know what happened but Leeds his own team do it just as much as any other team and he should know that by now - as for the decosion you win some you lose some - so again why so angry about such a common occurance, seemed a ludicrous over reaction to me.

Probably out of frustration

I’m not disputing that Leeds do it too. Frustration boiled over, he handled it wrong. I would imagine that he will learn from it.

Agree with having a look at Trout and maybe Walters. Ideally we get a couple of “W”s on the board first because bringing young lads into a struggling side isn’t great.
I still don’t know whether Walters comes to us properly, or whether he’s loaned back to Widnes?
Another wildcard is Mustapha, that lad can defend and puts himself about.
Be interesting again to see Furner’s selection for Hull.

Funnily enough if Tui had kicked his conversions and the obstruction try was given we might have only lost by a converted try.
I know plenty of if`s in there but as bad as we were and as good as Wakefield were we weren`t that far off.
And yes I`m trying to go for the glass half full approach here.
in fact not really sure why I`m posting this we would still have lost

You were really - but I get the point though Wakefield would argue that if they had done this and that you wouldn't have been able, its all conjecture really. On the night and lets be realistic its just one game Wakefield were miles better - who knows what things will be like come August/September time when it really matters.