Put matautia there..he seems to play ok there.well better there than centre

Powell will have until the first 6-7 games of 2023 before any real decisions are likely to be made, until then its a case of suck it up and hope he turns it around. And of course he will probably know this better than most - which is why he is making all these changes as quickly as possible. So whilst its painful to watch perhaps the only crumb of comfort is to hope that the displays we are seeing are down to a new squad needing to gel plus a chronic loss in confidence from all the defeats.

I'd rather we kept players in position as much as possible, so would look at

Thewlis
Wrench
Mata'utia
Wardle
Ashton
Ratchford
Williams
Mulhern
Clark
Harrison
Currie
Nicholson
Holmes

Mikaele
Amor
Bullock
Walker

If he persists with ratchford as his half back next season(and he says he will)then the first 6 or 7 games of 2023 will be as painful as the current ones. That's if we manage to avoid relegation.

I’d like to see Wrench and Thewlis combine at centre and wing. With Wardle and Ashton the other side that is some serious pace. That would mean Ratchford and Matautia to be at 1 and 6 in any sort of combination

ohh, thats good, i never thought of that.

A disappointment for me is that we don’t really utilise the pace of our back line.

Early in the game I would mix in an early kick for the backs to chase, even if just to plant the seed of doubt in the defenders. It would prevent the outside defence rushing up and putting as much pressure on our attacking options.

This is Powell's main objective for the rest of this season. Once security has been achieved, only then can we look forward to 2023, with optimism, dread, indifference or whatever.

yup, i've said this, early kick for ashton to chase, keeps their wing and fullbacks a bit more cautious, even last week in the second half, it would have been worth a punt or two, but posession and handover is king.

It annoys me that we don’t play to our strengths. Even in Price’s time, King was an obvious threat in the air, but we tried to force drop outs, to spend more time going side to side with no prospect of scoring, rather than putting it in the air for a 50/50.

Thinking back to Fa’afili, whenever we were in range the ball would be kicked to the corner. Repetitive, but effective.

If we didn’t play to kings strengths how did he wangle a new contract? From my memory we seemed to do an awful lot of high kicks to King

Lee Briers could kick just as accurately as most other players could pass.

His combination with Fa`afili was incisive.

I was just about to say, put Ratchford into the halves and give Thewlis some game time at fullback where he belongs. Put Wrench on the wing and have Minikin at centre.

But then I kind of thought to myself, Mata'utia has looked better in the spine than he has at Centre. He's filled in at Fullback a couple of times this season. And with Dufty probably coming in, Thewlis will either get no game time over Minikin or Wrench, or he's going to be shoved out to the wing. At this point I think we might have to accept Thewlis won't get his chance at Fullback for a couple of seasons, so commit to him as the Winger with Wrench at Centre for now. Put Ratchford at Scrum Half and get a head start on next seasons plans. Putting Williams at Stand Off where he's then on the left where he looks more comfortable. Then when Dufty comes in, I have confidence that Wrench and Thewlis will have fully earned their spots. And Mata'utia finally gets pushed out.

I'm quite tired of the constant changes to the team. I'd be happy to start the same team for the final 8 games, pending no injuries. Something like Mata'utia at Fullback, Williams and Ratchford in the halves, Harrison and Bullock starting at prop.

And adding onto other posts above, Sandow used to get us on the front foot with an early 40/20 attempt which he wasn't too bad at. Unfortunately, I don't have an ounce of trust in Williams' kicking game, and I don't think Ratchford is as smart as he should be with it at his age. What's so depressing about it, is that it's not even a basic kicking game, it's actually bad. It's always too short, too low, or directly at the opposition putting them in better field position. To be fair, the chases are usually quite poor on top of it. Saying that, even if we did have perfect kicks into the back corner, our defence would let them march down the field in about 3 tackles anyway.

King actually put together some good form, but I never understood the huge deal he got. Check the post that I made on this that came back up a few days back where I suggested that he had all the tools to do it, big strong fast good defender but lacked the ability to make space for himself or his winger. Still stand by that now, if a good coach can help him unlock that he could be a great centre, if not he’ll be decent back row/centre hybrid.

While King did get kicks, a lot were just when we booted it in the air and hoped for the best in midfield. There was no precision or preparation to finish the play before in a position to kick for him. See the Matt King try in the 2009 semi final, we almost but the tackle before just so we can get the kick position and angle right for the kick.

That is correct, and to be fair, the amount of times Blake Austin kicked the ball dead on the full may have explained Price’s reluctance to go with the tactic. Fair point.