These are the marginal ones. I wouldn't swap any of our three for any of theirs, and they wouldn't swap any back the other way.

I wouldn’t swap them either, but there has been something in Marshall’s game and discipline that hadn’t been there quite so profound. His vision and short kicking game had been superb.
I have to say this season he has been better than Ashton. Imo.

Thewlis over Miski this year is fair enough. He's been carrying a knee injury for a lot of this season though, and his 2023 form was outstanding. It remains to be seen if with a full off season he can properly recover and recapture that form, but if he can't I'd expect Eckersley to come in and take his place anyway.

I can 100% see why you'd say that about Williams. I'd still have French in front of him with my Wigan bias, but there's not much that you want from a half back that Williams can't do. Having Smith take responsibility for so much of the organisation gives us the luxury of having someone a bit more mercurial alongside him, whereas Williams probably doesn't really get that from Drinkwater as much as he should. What I'd say though is that French - for all he gets noticed for his individual attacking - has developed into a much more rounded player than I thought possible. When he was out for a couple of months we missed his right-edge defence as much as anything else.

I hope you are right but remember we were 12-2 down at HT in the CCF and Fitzgibbon played the first half. We had a full side out save for Philbin.

On that I think we let the occasion get to us. Other than that Fitzgibbon for me had been our most influential player. I really hope we can get him back like that for the whole season.