Johnson starting? Strange, he's got potential but I'm not really seeing the hype so far. Happy for him to have cameo's and get game time but O'Connor needs to be starting and playing the majority of the game if it's close.

Why would you start Johnson over O'Connor?

Other than swapping O'C and CJ I think thats the team that will play.

We could do with a big performance and good win from this one.
Hull are struggling and two banned players,just hope we domt let them get a few easy/ early scores to build their confidence and make the game harder for ourselves

With the injury to Clifford, and with Trueman still a couple weeks away, we will most likely line up with Sutcliffe in the halves. Any thoughts on how he got on there for you in that position?

Can only see our season getting worse at this point, wouldn't be too worried about Friday if I were you

Out of the two 9s Johnson definitely has more natural ability he looks easy when he comes on, think there's a lot more to come from him just hope he gets more time on the field.

As an aside, managed to catch the Fax vs Bulls game. Sam Walters was very good, lovely offload for Baldwinson's try and got over for one himself. He also put alot of pressure on 'Fax in defence.

In 2015, Sutcliffe kept Sinny out of the halves and was playing out of his skin until he got injured.

There's a great player in there, I don't know whether its coaching or personal application that has never unlocked the potential since that season.

That will probably be true as O'Connor has only just transitioned to 9, but hes unproven at SL level at the moment, and in my view isn't ready to be starting when we need to be building momentum and getting some consistency. O'Connors defence is especially key at the moment.

Smith obviously rates Johnson, so will get game time but doubt he will featuring every week. Against the bigger packs id rather have 4 forwards on the bench.

Watching both warm up on Friday you could see that in terms of build Johnson is much slighter and therefore less able to deal with big forwards coming down the middle at the start of the game. In terms of distribution he's clearly superior to O'Connor, who can still be a bit clunky, although an improvement on Leeming and Dwyer. Hopefully they'll both continue to work on improving their games in tandem. If so, we'll have a useful hooking combination.

Was it 6 or 7 players for the Bulls with Leeds connections last night?
Also thought Donaldson went well running the ball in and making some decent tackles.

Something like that:
Baldwinson
Lily
Thompson
Walters (Current)
Donaldson (Current)

Agreed, he ran really hard and tackled well.

O'Connor is doing pretty great considering his age and him not being a natural 9.
I'm hoping he and CJ keep stepping up as a pair. Not having to find a hooker would mean more resources can go on the two positions we will need to buy fir (FB and at least one HB)