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I dont want to make excuses for Smith and Agar because I do think mistakes have been made in the transition from the ageing team of Briers, Monaghan, Morley, Carvell, Hodgson as follows:-
A) The moment Grix suffered his injury we should have known that we were going to be short in the back row for the best part of 12 months - Laithwaite would have been a decent back up for short injury spells in the back row but not for 12 months because if he gets injured who is his back up.
B) it was just a few weeks before the start of the season when Wood left - Other teams have brought props in mid season (Tilse and Garbutt etc) but again it was a case of we will just go with what we have got.
C) We have brought in players like Clarke and Russell that are great down the middle off a quick play the ball and I fully expected us to play more of that type of game. From the first try we scored away at Hull I was convinced that we had changed our style of play and it would be happy days but we have rarely played to our strengths but if a replacement for Wood had been found and a short term replacement for Grix then we may have been better placed to cope with injuries.

Having said all that we cannot expect Philbin, King, King, Wilde to replace the strength in the tackle of Westwood, Bridge, Atkins, Harrison and Grix. Currie is great in attack but he is no Trent Waterhouse in dominating an attacker in the tackle, Laithwaite is similar. When Waterhouse made a tackle Europe was a bit closer to America by the time the ball was played.
I was one of Coopers biggest critics back in 08/09 because he appeared just content to make a tackle and didnt put the extra effort needed to wrestle and dominate but he has proved me wrong for the last 4/5 years now.
If you watch some of the younger players when a team mate has stopped the momentum they hesitate for a split second asking themselves "do I get involved and help wrap the ball up and wrestle the player on his back or do I get back in the defensive line". Players like Harrison, Westwood, Bridge and Atkins dont even hesitate, they just get stuck in get bodies in the tackle.
Sam Wilde had less hesitation than a lot of others that have had a lot more games than him.
But it will come - Currie has had over 80 games and is still not the finished article. I am sure that all of the younger players will learn a lot from Friday. They still have a lot to learn but hopefully alongside more players with experience
It would be interesting to see how many first grade games the whole team had between them that took to the field last Friday compared to the team that took to the field in the last challenge cup final. It was a very inexperienced team that took to the field last Friday and at a guess i would say there would be about 1000 first team games worth of experience missing to the 17 players at Wembley in 2012.