Quote Roy Haggerty="Roy Haggerty"I accept that all players have off games (quite a few had an off game last night). But there's a difference between a bad game and being permanently/temporarily off-form. I think Amor suffers slightly because he's always directly compared to Walmsley, who until last night was playing very well indeed, and also Walmsley's game I based around big carries and yardage which get the crowd up. But if you compare Amor's stats to the rest of the pack, then - Hull game excepted - I don't see that he's performing consistently worse. Indeed, on occasions like last night, he was, along with LMS, our standout forward.'"
The thing about Amor is - he's been absolutely outstanding pretty much ever since he arrived. Aside from coming back from injury I've always considered him our stand-out prop. Above even Walmsley. I agree that's he's not playing badly. But he's not playing at his best, either.
Quote Roy HaggertyAnyway, bottom line is that I disagree with St Pete - we don't need a prop. We have much higher priorities in other positions.'"
I agree entirely. I mean, when you look at Wigan's front row stats against Leeds (where Mossop & Clubb didn't make ten carries put together in the entire match!), or Warrington's disintegration - not to mention Catalans (who I thought were the roughest lot we faced toward the end of last season) it's plain daft to think we need any more grunt than we already possess.
Indeed, once we shook off day-dreaming at the start of the second half last night we didn't seem to have any problems making easy yards against Leeds' pack.
Our problem is we don't have an awful lot of cover in the backs. A few injuries and we're scrambling around trying to patch holes. As I said earlier, we perhaps should have promoted one of the more promising juniors to a bench position at the beginning of the campaign. But we didn't. And there's nothing we can do about it now.
All this griping and moaning about "lacking pace" and "penetration" is pure garbage. For all his critics - Turner's been the league's most potent finisher this season. We know Percy has plenty of quality. I can't BELIEVE people are criticising Makinson. And Swift played an absolute blinder against Wigan's supposed "wonder backs" (who we squashed flat - again).
Couple this with the return of Walsh - who people seem to have forgotten about. And let's not forget this is a proven partnership with Burns.
There's so much to look forward to this season. And yet the same crop of whiners are throwing their hands up and surrendering before we've even got anywhere near our stride!
Pitiful. The lads deserve better than this sorry lot.