I bumped into two of our first team players from the backline and they were both looking very lean, now if Perry has lost any weight, we'll stand a chance.

Playing devil's advocate, what reason do we have to believe that we can get any productivity from the halves?

Brown himself highlighted our halves as a major weakness and the most important area for strengthening and recruitment, but we are going in to the season with the same problems. Clearly, when he said that he had concerns, he had little faith in getting any great improvement from the current set up, so I see little reason to suspect that he will have produced any miracles. It also can't have been too inspiring for Lomax, Hohohaia or Gaskell to be told that they aren't up to the task by the new coach. I hope that I am proved wrong, but until a ball is kicked, none of us have any idea whether the halves issue will have been resolved, or even what line up we are likely to see. I don't think we will be a force until we sign a proven half back, a catalyst like Bobby Goulding was in the early Super League years.

Is the new ruling actually going to be used. I thought it was a trial for 4 friendlies only. It could be adopted by the RFL, but it's a bit late in the day with Championship teams and CC games due to start soon.

The kicking the ball dead rule could be adopted quickly as it would only require more accurate kicking.

The rule change on kicking the ball dead would seam to clash with the scrum ruling. As if you get penalised for kicking the ball dead from your own half, then surely teams who struggle to get out of their own half will start to angle kicks more for the touchline, so if they are too long they go into touch rather than dead in goal.

I'm not sure the RFL will adopt the rules in a World cup year, but it could make for some brainfarts come the world cup if they do and halves have to revert back to international rules.

Whilst i'm not saying they're going to dominate the SL, I think we have every reason to believe that we can get productivity from a half back pairing of Lomax and Gaskell - mainly because we have in the past. That combination, although inexperienced, showed the two lads could combine well a lot more consitently than Lomax and Hohaia.
Lomax had flashes last year, bt on the whole struggled at 7. The year before he won YPOTY from the same position.
Gaskell won plenty of plaudits for his performances in 2011 and had everyone in the world (bar Rush) crying for him to be brought back last year.

We have stuff in the locker that simply wasn't ustilised last year.

I'm not sure if we'll win a trophy, but I believe we are better off than last year and that the manner of our victories will be better.

I think Gaskell is a naturally gifted stans off, all his abilities are ideal for the stand off postion but to become a good halfback, you need to play week in and week out to develop a understanding with his halfback partner and also link between the forwards and backs.

I said at the time lomax and Gaskell was put together, that we need to stick with these two lads and accept we prob won't win anything for few years until they grow and develop.

Unfortunately some idiot called Royce decided to sign 28 year old fullback to play stand off. The same idiot got us in such a mess on the fieid with his crazy methods and team selection which left Mike Rush no option but to go with experince in order to give us a chance of plaff off rugby.

Because frankly how could they not be a vast improvement on last year? Gaskell will never be Wally Lewis, but even at his worst he brings a lot more options and creativity to the table than just immediately shuffling the ball one more down the line which is all we had from #6 last season for lawk's sake. And simply being freed of complete responsibility for moving the side around the pitch and providing all of our creative spark (tasks for which he is not suited) and being allowed some freedom to run at the defence a bit more instead (to which he is suited) will alone be enough to double Lomax' effectiveness. There is simply just no way we couldn't be a quantum leap better in the halves next year than this unless Brown is an incompetent idiot.

....and queue miscellaneous embittered Huddersfield fan pointing out that he is actually an incompetent idiot who never got them to the playoffs or Wembley, and will be playing TP and Manu in the halves....