So far ,i haven't seen Leyland do anything wrong ,unless Sam sees Ratchford as a steadier pair of hands.

I can only assume Leyland has done something behind the scenes to off Burgess, there's no rational explanation.

After reading through this thread I had to remind myself that we had actually won on Sunday and that Ratchford had a reasonable game ... Nothing too flashy but solid throughout the 80 mins,much like every other player ... So why should he be dropped this week ??

I think it’s more a case of challenging Leyland to go and take the shirt off someone. It was meant to be Hayes with Leyland in pursuit, now he’s got a slow moving target, but he obviously isn’t doing enough to force Sam to put his trust in him.

But, the one positive from this is the absolute iron confidence in Hayes. Sam has said publicly, as has Chambers, that he is the plan. It’s so un-Warrington like. We’re not sniffing around an aging superstar, not keeping the door open for Sneyd, it’s Hayes.

The job now is to persuade the terrace to be patient. He won’t be polished or the finished article, but we all have to take a breath when things go wrong, because if we do we might just drop lucky.

I guess it's all opinions. I cant remember him excelling in the halves in his career, he's 37 and we are spending cap on a backup half. He's a stop gap fix, not a strategic forward looking selection. It reminds me of something Price would have done and is total opposite of "next man up".

Do you think Hayes is good enough for us to win a league title in 2025? Or just good enough?

Last season was all about next man up, now this all feels a bit Peter Mata’utia. Granted Ratchford is not as crap as he was but would not have had him as next man up.

I am, so I'm deffo not saying that baring any late injuries in the warm up Leyland is starting with Fitzgibbon & Harrison also in the 17.

I'm also not saying that Ratchford, Holroyd & Musgrove drop out.

I must admit, I don’t know. He was certainly good enough to keep Drinkwater out of the team, and nobody would have been completely bowled over if we won it last year. So by that logic, he’s a chance.

I think a good example to look at is Harry Smith. Wigan fans were on his back when he was coming through, he got a rough ride but they stuck with him and he has cruised past Dodd as the “next England 7” and has realistically ended Lomax, Sneyd etc. England chances. He’s top class, the premier 7 in the competition by a distance.

I’m not saying that we blindly stick with a player from Young because of hope or suspicion, but he must have shown enough inside the club to earn that vote of confidence. I’m more than happy to give him an open mind. Let’s face it, if Ratchford is the other choice, it’s worth the gamble (no disrespect to Ratch, or Rubber Duckie).

Good points. Obviously i hope he becomes a top half back just that I cannot be sure he is going to be at this stage. Maybe I am reading too much into the "he's the future" as I'm sure we heard the same from Jamie Durbin onwards.

One of the disadvantages of relying primarily on the Academy to stock future Wire squads is that you need to play inexperienced players who will need to work through their errors in competitive games. I suspect there are not too many on here that think Hayes is a shoe in for HB, he does look a good prospect but we are only going to find out 12 months or more down the line. At the moment Burgess has either been lucky or has been very good at judging the right time to field players like Holroyd and TR and we have reaped the benefit. I think it's great that Tai has been dropped and (atm) replaced by a young Academy lad. Track back a year and we all thought he was a breath of fresh air because his defence shored up that edge. So now not only do we have real competition at centre, but we are also demanding some attacking flair and nouse.