21

Good youth management!

He was giving the kids the most amount of first team experience he could in games which are the least success-or-bust.

Perfectly rational.

Easy to say in hindsight, but no one can be completely sure of what was going through Brown's noggin.

Cracking performance from Mighty Joe Young. Hard to tell how good given Salford are a bag of turd, but impressive still.

Brown knew what he was doing and managed the kids really well. Percy is a fine example of that when he took him out when he started to struggle.

He's shown glimpse before the salford performance but hadn't put it all into one game until Thursday.

I agree, Brown knew how to handle our young players. Thompson and Richards were perfect examples. He played them sparingly at first, and put them in and out of the team at the right time throughout the season. Then he had the balls to put them both in for the play offs and Grand Final ahead of the more experienced, but less useful Laffranchi. The only mistake he made was dropping Swift for Dawson, but again thankfully he put Swift back in.

Brown did some great work with our young players and turned our recruitment from shambolic to fantastic in just two years, and we're now reaping the rewards of his fantastic work.

Hard to tell given it was a preseason friendly, but he made a mess of the Wigan pack in that game

Again I don't think that was a mistake.

Swift was getting turned around in defence at that time. Had he just left Swift there, more and more teams would have targeted that side and it could have gone from being an issue to being a mental issue. Remember Kevin Penny, a talent going forwards, but left to flounder in defence and had his confidence and abilities blown away, it''s taken the best part of 5 years to turn that around.

Swift was rightly dropped, got time to fix up that part of his game and is now back just as lethal going forwards but more solid in defensive duties.

I'm also very much against having favourites and playing them what ever their performance. Players should always have the pressure to play for the jersey and not feel from day 1 that they are a dead cert to play come what may.

He was showing signs at the start of last year but I know for fact that Brown wanted him to gain strength. His Wining try against Wigan was basically signs of what talent he had.

It's not often I big young lads up as anything can happen. I was one of the few that said the likes of tyrer, Dixon, ashurst etc wouldnt make it at saints when all was saying we had the new Jamie Lyon and Chris joynt.

I don't think the word dropped is the correct way to describe it. Brown and KC both had talks with Percy when we took him out the other year and explained why he was taken out, what he had to work on and that he wasn't dropped but taken out to fix problems. Both greenwood and swift have had similar chats.

And Dawson was better in defence?

Swift looks no different in defence this season than he did when he was dropped. Sometimes we just have to go with what we have because what he brings in attack is worth the risk in defence IMO.

Ok not dropped but given time to work on his game.

Swift is now a lot more assured in defense. And yes Dawson was better in defence than Swift was before he had time to work on the game.

Now I would say Swift is better defensively.

Swifty is 100% better than Dawson so I totally agree. What he brings in attack does outweigh his defensive mistakes.