I like the look of Smith, and i know it is only Furners 2nd game as coach, but Smith seems to keep getting overlooked. McDermott got stick for not giving him much chance but when Sinfield took over he was not a regular then either. Makes you wonder if they all think he is still not ready for 1st team.

i am fearing the same and wondering if Hurrell will be pulled out at the 11th hour

We need Hurrell fit for the games we have a better chance in. No point playing him injured. He’ll cause some damage when the weather improves.

He can’t be far off, but you might prefer Sutty to him given the difference in experience, if there’s only room for one of them. Sutcliffe played quite well against Wire.

I'd add that the quality of our home grown talent has, overall, not been good enough. Too many of those inadequate players are ones we've produced.

A positive start would be to have 2 props in the starting front row instead of back rowers (I don't consider Cuthbertson a prop by any definition) then see how they go from there. The game will always be based around it being the main priority to dominate this area, I'm not sure where the thinking of sending that front row up against Hill, Cooper and Clarke came from.

Ferres is absolute garbage, has been for 3 year, still gets an undeserved start last week, garbage yet again. if squad was selected on form he'd be on duel reg at fev, if theyd even want him. Cam Smith does pretty well whenever he gets a chance, but cant get look in, we'l end up losing him at this rate.

It's easy to focus on the negatives after the season we've just had, a big opening defeat, and difficult games to come. The forum breeds pessimism in these circumstances.

For the sake of saying something a bit different... Games are not won on paper (as we've discovered countless times in the past coming up against teams with injuries), Leeds are due to produce a response after last week (if not necessarily a result), this is very much a different team to last year, and playing Wigan usually brings out the best in us. Bring it on!

Yes but you would be up for the first game of the season surely? How much of a response can we really expect?
We can win the game against Wigan, but with the front row issues we have, we cannot afford to play slack, drop off tackles etc. High completion rates, high skill and good kicking game would help.

I think they were up for the game against Warrington. At this stage of the season I'd be willing to forgive some of the failings we saw because they are a new team, with a lot of new combinations and a new coach (cf. Warrington at the same point last season). And like it or not, I bet a few players were probably guilty of reverting to type when the chips were down in the first half... It might take a bit of time to get 2018 out of the system.

I'm not sure what kind of response we can expect. At the least they need a different approach to being competitive around the ruck and being less passive in the collision, on top of the things you mention. I think we should be able to expect these things to be better with the players at our disposal, never mind these two extra rawboned props everyone keeps going on about us missing. The issue should be whether we can be competitive around the ruck [iconsistently [/i over 80 minutes against the bigger teams with the weaker pack at our disposal, not whether we can do it at all... Let's see.

There were a few players who can do better than last week so let’s hope we put up a better fight at least.

If Hurrell doesn't play then we could put Handley at centre Luke Briscoe on the wing or give my mate Golding a place on the wing!!