that's true, we don't. We don't really know what Lowes' view of the strongest team was, and certainly not Smith as he's only just off the plane; plus we have had so many people out; plus we have started to get a few people coming in.

It's the sort of situation where it might take a year, or two, that we don't have to settle on your strongest team.

But at the moment it is probably nearer a case of the least-weak team that we can cobble together. Which TBF Smith has made a decent fist of so far, as he has with the attitude and belief (players and fans!).

On the subject of injuries, in his interview in the Bulletin paper on Sunday, Purts said he'd had a shoulder operation and was just starting his physio. So that's some injury news from the club, right there! smh

Think its a bit of an exaggeration to say fax have been murdering us with regularity. They've won last 3 games 20-16, 52-18 and 14-10. first two we rested a lot of key players as lowes viewed middle eights and MPG the following weeks as more important fixtures, rightly or wrongly. We were missing a few and had late withdrawals on day for this yrs fixture. Dont think winning by 4 points a couple of times is murdering us regularly. The 52-18 was more worrying but we had one eye on MPG so there was a reason for it.

We definitely need at least one of Thomas or Addy fit this week to partner Charnock, but assuming one is I'd be fairly confident of getting the result. Our defence is steadily improving under Smith and our attacking play will improve as Charnock and Moss settle in and squads confidence increases.

1 ) ?
2 ) ?
3 ) ?
4 ) ?
5 ) ?
6 ) Gaskell
7 ) Addy
8 ) ?
9 ) Baille
10 ) ?
11 ) ?
12 ) ?
13 ) ?

14 ) Lauaki
15 ) ?
16 ) ?
17 ) ?

2 Blythe

Won't play again this season and is contemplating retirement.

Well that's just amazing. Purtell addressed the diners in the Coral Stand after the Batley game, and was asked how his shoulder operation had gone. Fine was the response. When will you be available was the next question. Worst case, said Adrian, the week before the middle 8's.

which summarises the problem. The real question is what is our strongest team if everybody were 100% match fit. But this is RL, and therefore thats a fantasy team. The lack of information about injuries makes our attempts to work out the best team a guessing game.

Perhaps its one for Gledders to ask post match why over here its secret whereas in the NRL all team injuries are published regularly!

Far more media scrutiny over in Aus, simple as that. Look at football clubs in this country - they can't keep anything under wraps because of media attention, for the simple fact that they can sell papers with the news.
Conversely, the general public don't give two hoots about Mitch Clark's leg injury so nobody bothers to try and find out.

On the subject of our strongest squad, i don't think we have one. I think Smith chooses a particular 17 to try beat that particular opposition that day. We've seen him play Addy at hooker and put OB on bench when playing Leigh so not to get out muscled early on. We've seen him play 5 props against Batley (Lowes didn't do that once last year) If Clark didn't get injured so early on, i think we would have won by a bigger margin.

Lowes played the same 17 virtually every week, running our best players into the ground. How easy must we have been to scout in a lead up to playing us? Batter Sidlow and Clough as Lauaki and Crossley will only play 10 minutes each. Then in the most important game of the year, he panicked playing centres on the wing, centres at hooker, playing our 2 best props for 70 minutes and almost forgetting he could make substitutions.

That's also what he said in Bulletin paper at weekend