If Long is playing, we best make sure all our tries come in under the sticks.

Of course it would.

He's had a couple of poor games this year but last week we got caught in possession on the last five times. FIVE times in one match. Add to that the fact that, besides Eastmond, Pryce and Wilkin, we had kicks from Gilmour, Flannery and Gidley. There is absolutely no way this would happen with Long on the pitch. Thankfully the rest of our game was good enough to pull us through against Wigan, but we'll lose more games than we win if we keep doing that.

Like I said earlier, I wouldn't mind if Eastmond played 7, as long as he was given charge of the kicking game. Far too much confusion last week.

We also lacked a hooker for parts of the game.

Instead of other players kicking the ball, with Longy we'd just go backwards 50 meters and then turn the ball over there.

longy wouldn't have made much different in the kicking game last week, it might have been worse.

Conroy??

The ONE time i can remember us going back like that was against Bradford and about 5 players were involved!

Longy's kicking has been generally fine this year - head and shoulders above everything else (except Wilkin at Leeds and Pryce in London)

Longys kicking hasn't been the best

I would say it has been average this year, but thankfully his play has been better.

Lets hope he performed on Sunday

Nonsense.

Long has been hit and miss this year and has been partly responsible for a couple of shambolic performances (Bradford at home, Wigan in Edinburgh), but to say that is frankly ridiculous. Long will make the odd poor kick, but last week I don't think we made a single good one on the last tackle, and half the time didn't get a kick in at all. It wasn't much better against Wakey either.

If you honestly think that our kicking game is worse with Long in the side than it was last week you must be scratching your head about how we're top of the table.

Longy can improve our kicking game when he is playing well, but if he isn't playing well then his kicking game isn't very good.

Longys kicking game depends on how he is playing

But a poor kicking game is still a kicking game. My point is last week we didn't have one at all.

I thought we had a good kicking game, with one kick leading to a try. On most sets we got wigan down field and sometimes kept them apart from when we let Wigan run past us

In that case there is no point continuing this discussion.

From what i can remember from the majority of your squads you played Gilmour at SR due to other players out hth

Longy's kicking is better than what happens when we are without him. However that is more to do with the fact that more than one player seems to get involved and take the ball of Kyle. He should do the last tackle kicking instead of the indecision we have now.

i'd go with kyle starting at 7 then when kc goes off, move to 9 and longy to 7. But in slick we trust.