Gibson has a torn calf and doesn't sound like he will be back fit any time soon. I saw on social media the other day that Hitchcox has started training again so hopefully he isn't a million miles away

As others have said above, Featherstone have hit form lately and coupled with the fact that Chisolm is still in his honeymoon period and playing against his old club, i expect him to run the show for them. If we play as well as we did against Leeds then i think we have a chance of taking the 2 points but i'm going with a Featherstone win by 10.

Yeah for me this season was all about being in the mix, finding our feet back at this level and seeing where we get. Next year and beyond needs to see us beginning to become an established top 5 side. Promotion is sadly a few years away I'd say. There's just no way it can be rushed if we're to have a sustainable model for the club.

I say sustainable but there's still the nagging doubt that our current owner can be our sole funder. I'm not one for conspiracies (although I know who REALLY killed Dianna) but my worry is that if we don't have a secret investor, we might simply have a man with moderate means, and we know how that one sometimes ends.

On the attacking front, for me it's more that we don't attempt, rather than don't achieve. We're far too formulaic and don't seem willing to try anything different. Our halves don't take on the line enough, whether it comes off or not, if you don't even try it then the defensive line can discount the (lack of) threat from an acting half and just look for the runners - we're making their job easier.

Off-loads is an other area we don't make enough use of. I can understand that JK probably considers it 'risky', and it is but I'm not suggesting we do it every other tackle like some clubs. There are plenty of tackles where players could be given the discretion imo, and again, if we never do it defences can ignore the threat and concentrate on making the 10, again making their job easier. It is a balance I know but imo we haven't got it quite right.

Don't you think we slightly overplay the conservative style of John Kear a little bit. I'm not sure what we are serving up is quite what even he has in mind.

Agreed. But I'm not sure we're practicing anything else or we'd be more fluent wouldn't we?

Can't be that hard for ball carriers to have some support runners for instance rather than people standing back and watching.

To be honest, I believe JK is more a pragmatist than anything else. I think he uses the tactics he feels are achievable by the players available and are conducive to breaking down/containing the opposition and I'm far from against that. For sure it isn't always the free flowing expansive style of rugby we'd all really like to see, and though obviously we wouldn't expect that all the time (well, most of us), when things aren't working it's maybe time to unfasten those top buttons a bit and try something else a little less conservative?

I don't think the vast majority of fans mind us being beaten, if we've gone down fighting and given our best against a superior team but sometimes it seems we think that coming out of the game with best stats, more than actually winning the game is the objective. The sad part is that we too often don't change tactics even when the scoreboard shows it isn't working.