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.

This was a massive part of our threat in the later Cullen/early TS era, Fa'afili was the first but then Hicks, King and Joel Monaghan all played the role of being a target who could out compete defenders for the high ball and Briers at that stage of his career had mastered the attacking kick to the corner better than anyone else in the game. Teams really struggled to defend that. We lost many things when Briers retired but that was a huge part of our attacking game gone immediately.

Fa'afili was not a big guy but he was very good in the air, he had a superb leap, I remember him tormenting GB for the Kiwis a couple of years before we signed him. He copped a bit of stick from our fans as he didn't look like a special winger, he wasn't that quick, prone sometimes to being a bit cumbersome when he was forced to turn and deal with kicks behind him on our own line, but his ability to win aerial balls changed our attack and he had a solid stocky build and could get his head down and finish off moves close to the line without being knocked into touch, which meant he was a perfect recipient for Gleeson's offloads. He did score a lot of tries.

good all round finisher, something matty russell could have only dreamed of

Joel Monaghan, a try per game at Warrington, that's some stat.

But he did ok on his dummy half scoots.

Incredible finisher. One of the best I've seen.

Yes, not that fast, but boy could he score tries.

Tremendous eye/ hand coordination and rarely dropped a ball.

The try at Wembley off Myler`s kick, when he was looking back over his head was a brilliant example.

Thats a good shout, thewlis is the future 1 for sure but ratchford is definitely better at FB than on the halves.