Burgess, Lynch, Scruton, Kopczak, Langley, Solomona, that list of names supplies as much indication as any why we are pretty erratic so far this year;

Burgess may be being asked to do other roles, but there's no getting away from the fact that he's having a poor 2009 compared with the heights of some of his 2008 form.

Lynch cannot be criticised but seems to be carrying injuries frequently. Still, he's head and shoulders our best at the moment, Menzies excluded.

Scruton did well enough against Leeds but other than that has looked only average so far.

Kopczak to me has been second only to Lynch, he has come on a lot, but he's only a youngster still and is learning.

Langley is a disappointment. Sure he works hard but he used to regularly break the line, go on runs etc. yet now for some reason he never does. What happened to his potential? He's the right age now, we should be seeing the best of him.

Solomona, well, I am a fan of his creativity and special offloads but thinking about it, Endacott I'm afraid may well have it about right. Certainly, when we're struggling as we have been for form, we need a lawn-sprinkler type of player as much as we need a hole in the head, if there is one thing above all we need now it is ball retention when we do have it. We kill ourselves, and that's a fact.

In the light of the above, the signing of Menzies, big as it was, gains in importance and significance. If you take his immense contributions to every game out, we would be in dire straits indeed.
Not every player can play top of his form every week, but we are entitled, across the board, to expect much more from our pack men than we seem to be getting.

He'll get them around the park, but the positive is we've now got a good pantomime villain to boo on Friday Then there's Westwood too!

All set to be an entertaining game!

Think that pretty much sums up the season so far. Under-performing, we should be seeing a lot more.

TBF I should have mentioned the excellent Morrison. How we miss him, he's never had a bad game for mine.

Imo if we had him on the park against Wakey we would probably have won. He seems to know how to get the team into shape and stop all the stupid mistakes.

Like against Hull KR, Giants, Wigan, Castleford?

Agreed, I just hope we can hang onto Lynch, quite a few clubs should be interested in him when his deal runs out.



Suppose it's easier to look good playing for a good side as he did at Leeds. I reckon he can do better though.



He gets better with every week, but has still a lot to learn. Good to see him getting more gametime recently. I'd liek to see him be a bit more aggressive, he's a big lad and could do more damage if he got more stuck in.



Langley does the donkey work but that's about it. Can't remember the last time he broke a tackle or gave a good pass. At least his technique around the ptb has improved a bit, he seemed to give too many penalties away last year. He needs to up his attacking game IMO because he just doesn't offer anything in that dept.



In recent weeks we've had no problem scoring tries so it's not as if we need the killer offloads. If he can't be disciplined with the ball then he should be left out. The last thing we need as you say is a "lawn sprinkler".



If Burgess, Scruton and Langley find some form then we're going be fine but those three in particular need to extract the digit.

If you swapped Morrison for Solomona at Wakey we'd have won the game.

Agreed. solomona shouldn't be given much game time against wire, he's a liability.

It was always obvious that we would sorely miss the talismanic big Joe Vagana, but perhaps we didn't realise just how important he was to us.

Joe - what are you doing till October?

Probably thinking "I got out of there at the right time"

We do missing having a big fella coming on as an impact player, McNamara clearly saw this as a gap given the attempt to get Moi Moi.

Alas I think Joe's decision to retire was the right one at the right time.

Use Solomona as that, maybe he could throw his weight at the opposition rather than throwing the ball at them.

Solomona was certainly an impact player last weekend, in a negative sense!

However you're right, if he can stop trying too hard to offload then I would play him in short bursts off the bench. His fitness would be less of an issue then too.

Endacott reckons that's the role he's best suited to (you'd think I was selling this book!)