Can Lineham legally have signed a contract with anybody at this point of the season?

Personally, i am gutted that tautai is banned and powell injured. They are both terrible and having sammut playing and leuluai at hooker makes them a lot more dangerous.

Only if we have allowed it.

We could have told him we weren’t going to renew and allowed him to negotiate early so he could sort his future out.

I'd pick the strongest team regardless.
They're both Wire players and we need to finish as high up the table as possible to give us the best chance of winning the GF.

What's the injury to Goodwin, i've completely missed this one Mamo to centre with Lineham on the wing would do for me

Godwin was bent backwards in a tackle, he looked as if he sprained his ankle.

As rd says strongest team and for me with lineham size it will be an advantage!

If hill ratchford Clark were dropped would they be waiting to get their place back?

Lineham has had A bad game hardly Warrants completely losing his place in the team and imo Mamo has done nothing special to keep him out of side. Doing nothing wrong is not enough to take someone's place in the side in my eyes!!

Isn't that the point though - that there is no concept of a someones predetermined place in the side. There are current occupants of a game day jersey which they earn on merit. Loose form and someone else will occupy it. I bet Price has his reasons.

Was it not players thinking they were/actually were undroppable that caused problems in the past?

There certainly was a perception amongst some that, historically, some players appeared undroppable, how true that was I am not sure. Was it related to the coaches view that despite the drop in form 'the player' was still better in the coaches eyes than any possible replacement?.

This season we have in my view the strongest overall squad for a good while so now hopefully we have quality backup so if anybody is either slightly crocked or suffers a drop in confidence / form we can address it without necessarily weakening the team too much.

Within reason, it up to a player to 'lose' his shirt

i agree, mamo keeps the shirt, and on top of that atkins can thank the gods of injury that godwin got crocked this week, as he would still be missing out otherwise.

Nasty ,deliberately caused injury on Goodwin.

Aside from form, it's also worth considering the opposition man for man. Who will Lineham/Mamo be likely to oppose v Wigan. The Wigan wings are likely to be pacy, so do we match/surpass that with Mamo's pace; or do we use Lineham who is still pacy, but carries a power advantage?

The moving of the leg before pulling Bryson back, by the same player, looked very naughty.