Ashe looked dangerous away at Hull last year as well. As you say it is hard to know without seeing the team without Wellens if it would be an improvement. But you have to break some eggs to make an omelette. We have to be willing to give some players a go in the position and be prepared for them to make mistakes to find the right man. I have no doubt that the Wello groupies would be screaming on here the second a bomb gets dropped by a replacement in the same way the Foster lovers cry every time a conversion is missed.

Its a point well made, I think that when Wilkin is playing that he tries to cover the traditional loose forward type of playmaker, but he now gets involved in so many tackles that he will not have the required energy in some parts of the game. It was mentioned that wellens was asked to try and become that extra play maker and he has the ball playing ability to be able to do that - but he doesnt seem to be covering it as well as the others who have natural pace.
It is without doubt a difficult position we find ourselves in - with no clear and easy way out. It certainly isnt helped when we have coach's who will not be running the team next year. I hope that Brown has been guiding the current staff to put processes in place to bear fruit next year.

Sometime I feel for Wello. In those situations, he's like the guy on star trek with the red uniform.
Our play is reletively predictable - Has been since potter.
Add to that slow distribution by Hohaia and slow movement off the ball by Wello and it culminates in an easy defend for our opposition. If they go one step further and agressively target him in defence, then it buggers us right up.

It's back to that old chestnut of Pete's. Recruitment and more to the point recruiting the right guys for the right places. I think we have recruited good players but not nessasarily for the right slots.

Its correct though in part, I just don,t think our priority is replacing Wellens at the moment. Our nightmare is our half backs, thats were it wants fixing first.

I remember at the beginning of the season quite a few on here were moaning, slagging off Wellens, Meli, and Wilkin when in actual fact they are the ones holding the team together to a certain extent at the moment.

This season I,ve mentioned we have had many false dawns, and this will continue when we come up against aggressive teams with decent half backs. Leave Wello were he is at the moment, we can,t afford to experiment with a full back. We,ve had nearly a full season to sort out our half backs and we are no further on than round 1.

I disagree that our nightmare is our half backs. The halfbacks we had last year were doing fine, developing nicely. The mistake has been to put Hohaia in there and mess it all up. What we really need is a couple of feisty props. We miss Jammer massively. TP and LMS are both lazy by comparison to Jammer and neither has anywhere near his level of skill either, which makes things worse. We have been bullied out of some games which makes our halfback situation even worse.


Meli? He scores some tries and people think he's fantastic. He is thoroughly lazy in defence, as was again seen on Friday night with the ball bouncing over his head (good job a Cas player wasn't quick off the mark or else that would have been a try for them). He hardly ever looks for work either (and I've seen many on here criticise Makinson for that). We have functioned in spite of Meli more often than not for a good few years now.

Wilkin and Wello I will grant you (although both have had mixed seasons and Wello is often undermined by his tendency to have unseemly strops).

I think that had that happened this year, with Wellens being rested like Hodgson has been at Wire at times, then there would have been far less criticism of the situation.

Can I just make sure that I have got this right you are saying that almost all of the 257 times he has carried the ball this season have been passes/kicks to his wing - that seems an awful lot of ball going over to his side of the field - but you would have to admit that with him making the most metres of any back in the team with 2364 that we should be grateful that he does get so much ball - perhaps teams should start to not target him as he is such a dangerous person to have carrying the ball.

He's also mean to dogs, kids and old ladies.

The Half Back situation is a massive priority for Nathan Brown as is the front row in my opinion. Without question we need a organising 7 that can guide or team around the park. Ever since Longy departed we have been lacking alarmingly in the department. As I have said on numerous occasions before Laffranchi should be moved into the Back Row, preferably at Loose Forward in role that Jason Hooper did so well in 2006. Puletua into the front row would fix this problem up without having to go into the market place.

I think the moving around of players would help this year, but for a team to be challenging I think you need 5 props.

ie Cayless, Fasavalu, Baloo, Graham, (was it fozzard?)

But we had 5 props on rotation in 2006, if we where caught with injuries one week it meant at worst we had 3 damn good props with a couple of 2nd rowers filling in on the bench.

Yes it was Fozzard. I doubt you will ever get 5 props of that class again in the same squad tbh. Perry, Puletua, Clough, McCarthy-Scarsbrook are up there with the best props in Super League when they are on fire which they havent been for the big games granted. If we can add a s***house prop to that Ill be happy.