Would not criticise Walmsley, for me he put his hand up playing when his partner is about to drop.
It must be a massive distraction going into the game.

Be interesting if he misses next friday what with paternity leave. Not to mention the knock he took.

As for Barba he is miles off the pace at present. However i feel we need to keep playing him as the more upto speed he gets the greater the chance of him doing that bit of magic man magic. For me he shows glimpses of his class, but this is masked by the lack of pace and his inability to take the high kicks.

I think the high ball problem is due to being low on confidence due to his lack of fitness. He s not getting there in position to give him the time to catch it. Few times in the last two games he's delibratley not even gone for it as he knows he's way off the pace..

He s shown nice touches with the ball but again his fitness and lack of pace is making him unable to make breaks.

In all honesty the decision to.plsy him from the off imo will cost us a top 4. That's down to Holbrook. Team moral must be low as players who have earned the right to play all year have been dropped or moved position for a guy who's so unfit it's unreal. He should have been on bench.

Even if he gets match fit this year (I very much doubt it) then he's back home to oz for few mouth and loses it again.

For me it's got to be lomax at fullback and Theo and Richardson in the halves with barba on bench.

I don't get that mentality. Lomax is finished, permanently. He's no faster than Barba is and he's been out for a year and is in terrible condition.

Barba was the one of only two sources of creativity and threat last night, Richardson being the other. Yet you want to drop him? I know he's not fit, but I don't see how not playing him will help that or us. We won't win a semi final or final without him and possibly won't with him either. But we need to give him the time in the side, for the sake of next season if nothing else.

Although I know Saddened is something of a provocateur, there is a grain of truth in what he says here. It's possible to make a case - and I emphasise through no fault of Lomax's own - that the club's sentimental attitude towards Lomax is at the heart of our decline since 2014. In that period, he has missed huge numbers of games. That in itself has hurt the club. But more: because of his status, the club didn't seek to buy a replacement, permanent fullback (until the Barba opportunity was seized). Instead we've taken journeymen short-termers like McDonnell and Quinlan, which meant we didn't adequately replace this absolutely vital position for the last three years. In addition, Lomax was taking up a significant slice of the salary cap. Which - along with similar long-term absentees like Walsh - meant that we couldn't recruit the quality of player we needed to remain competitive, and ended up taking on championship-standard players like Lee, Owens and Peyroux.

When Lomax recovered fit enough to play, we played him - we had to, given his wages. But as Saddened points out, his speed has gone, his manoeuvrability has also gone, and his defence has never been his strong point, as he's fairly small. Which means that we have a player who does know how to join the line in attack, but does in easy-to-defend predictable straight lines, with very little chance of elusive footwork, and who is not secure in defence. Yet even now, we lever him into the starting lineup every week, despite the fact that he is not our best fullback, he isn't our best standoff, he isn't our best scrum-half and he certainly isn't one of our two best centres. People have moaned a lot about how pushing Smith ahead of Richardson caused problems for us against Wigan. But for me, substituting Lomax for the in-form Fages was equally damaging. I've seen people argue Fages must have suffered a blow to his morale because of his replacement to fit Barba in the side. But he wasn't shifted to fit Barba in the side. He was shifted to fit Lomax in the side, once Barba replaced Lomax.

Lomax is a great guy, by all accounts, and a model professional in the earnest Kevin Sinfield mode. None of this is his fault. But he is no longer the quality of fullback we need to bring glory back to the club. Barba can be. Lomax will never be again. We're often a sentimental club to our players - particularly the home-grown veterans. We held on to Wellens too long. Some would argue we're holding on to Wilkin too long. We've probably held on to Lomax too long, and because of the significance of his pay packet, it's hurt the whole club badly.

Lomax takes 99.9% of high balls and very very rare he misses tackles.

At this moment in time due to barba being so unfit, id say lomax is 2 times the player barba currently is.

If it was swift dropping all these kicks and looking like barba does then everyone would be saying get shut.

Yes barba is a worldclass player and I do think he will come good but this is play off rugby and every game is must win, it's not pre season friendlies what are used to get match fit.