Quote: The Speculator "Agreed. Two years ago, almost to the day, we lost 40-8 away to Catalans, and our pack that day was Mulhern, Clark, Cooper, Longstaff, Holmes, Magoulias. We also had Mata'utia and Currie in the centres. Sacre bleu!'"
I think this is a really good post. I suspect we have not seen any major change in Philbin's performance over the last few years. But what we are seeing is a much stronger pack combined with much higher levels of motivation / effort and better coaching. So Philbin's performance looks the poorer by comparison.
Perhaps we should bask in the sunshine of a pack that is getting better by the week with ( hopefully ) Yates coming in, and the younger props coming through later on, rather than look back to the gloomy period of the last few years.