St. Etrigan has got it spot on in his/her post.

Gardner don't know if to drop back or stay in the line coz the other team always has 2 man overlap.

Does he drop back and leave a massive overlap?

Does he join the line and number up but risk the kick?

It all boils down to our outside defence not numbering up.

At least if he is the line, Wellens is in behind, covering the kick.

Don't know if you ever played the game but wingers are taught at the age of 7 to drop back on last tackle.

In the modern game they at times drop back on 4th.

Wello can't cover rite behind the winger as he has his own ground to cover.

I do play the game, and Gardner should stay in the line on the 4th and drop back on 5th. On the 4th Wellens can cover kicks in and behind the line, on 5th if it's clear the opposition aren't kick Gardner can move into the line and prevent the overlap. The wingers only drop back 15-20 metres so Gardner should be able to get back into the line before the ball is passed out.

Spot on mate but with the overlap on our right side so bad it leaves gardner in 2 minds.

Does he help out gidley who is marking 2 or 3 players?

Does stay back and cover the kick?

If our right side defence numberd up he could drop back and cover kicks.

I think you will find that most wingers now drop behind the line by few meters on 4th.

I've played centre for last 15 years.

We need the right 2nd row to cover the right side, instead of buggering off so Gardner can still drop back without leaving Gidley to deal with 3 men.

The whole right side defence are to blame tho not just Gardner.

The halfback, 2nd row, centre and winger need to work together on the right side.

The try at MM was gardners fault tho coz he didn't cover the kick even tho he made it there 1st.

How was that gloating?

We won the game but Saints are still the much better team.........the gap is hopefully closing though.

Have to agree in the main. In the early 90's, you had the likes of Martin Offiah, Jon Devereaux, Alan Hunte, Anthony Sullivan, Mark Preston, Jon Bentley and Paul Eastwood. Even the likes of Mark Forster and David Plange were no where near as gaffe prone as the current lot.

Can I get a pair of those rose tinted glasses because they are working wonders on the fumble machines that were Anthony Sullivan, Mark Preston, Paul Eastwood,Mark Forster and David Plange.

Not one of the platers you have mentioned ever had to deal with the amount of kicking that todays wingers have to - if they had you would see the same problems with all of them as you see in Gardner.

All this talk about wingers dropping back is fine and under any other scenario you are quite right, but once the opposition get 15m or less from your line then exactly how far do you think a winger can drop back 2m? 3m? that is more than enough for an astute kicker/halfback etc. to make it look like he is going to kick and then give a cut out pass to the now unmarked winger or make it look like he is going to give that pass and then put in a kick to the ingoal.

Whichever way that is done the winger has very little time to decide whether to move forward or backwards. Mostly kicks through are defused by somebody taking an educated guess and getting it right what will happen pass or kick. If they get it wrong then they can be made to look slow, incompetent or just bad. It is purely a decision making process.

The bits that are annoying are when the player guesses right but then makes a balls up due to thinking too much (ala Gardner for the Richards try on Sat).

While the fullback shouldnt be sat in the corner for these kicks he should at least be only 1 or 2 m inside of the kicker so that he has a great chance of getting to the ball first as he only really needs to concentrate on moving in one direction. The same as the opposition winger - who has all of the advantages over the defensive winger.
You should also have a player in the line but somewhere around the posts to look for any sort of ricochet or reverse kick.

For me these are the places which are letting us down, not always the fullbacks fault as sometimes they have made the previous tackle, but structure should compensate for this, but at the moment it isnt.

What I can say about Ade is that he dithers in defence.

He is often caught out standing between the centre and winger because he doesn't make a clear desicion, whether to come in and tackle the centre (hopefully) before the pass, or to stay on his man.

It would make sense, although I'll try and watch for it in the future, that on some occassions when he should drop, he'll only half commit and leave himself vunerable.

Cant blame Ade, he needs a decent centre to help him out.

Problem is as was shown at the weekend. Peter Fox at KR has some severe defensive deficiencies.
He was knowhere for 2 of Warringtons trys.

But at least he's fast.