I’m actually very happy with our backs for this and next season.

FB: Ratchford, Ashton, Thewlis, Mamo
Wing: Charnley, Lineham, Ashton, Mamo, Thewlis
Centre: GI, King, Gelling(?), Brand, Burrell, Mamo
Halves: Austin, Widdop, Ratchford, GI, Riley Dean

Obviously, there are question marks over Gelling as to whether we may of seen the last of him due to his off field discipline. And you could suggest Mamo may be released to make space for the overseas quota for GI. My only worry for is our 4th choice prop, we still lack another prop and have done so for the last 3 years now. Hill and Cooper are entering the twilight of their careers it would be best to recruit in this position ASAP. As we know, we don’t get enough minutes out of Sita and Latu couldn’t seem to of stayed away from the fast food joints during the pre-season.

The next area we need to strengthen after that would be in second row, BBM will be a massive loss. You could argue he’s been our best forward the last twelves months or since he regained his fitness and has been a wrecking ball at times. There are still plenty of questions surrounding Currie and Livett regarding their contract status, there’s obviously been little murmurs about on going discussions. But nothing official has come out as of yet, it would be very disappointing to lose them both including BBM. I would be happy if we signed McMeeken as is he off contract as well but it’s all pure speculation at this stage.

I think he’s had a great start to this season, and had some flashes mid way through last year (when he regained his full fitness). He’s become a real weapon of our attack and scored a fair few tries to show, out of BBM/Currie/Hughes the second row I’d least want to lose would be BBM at the moment. 2018 I will admit he was unfit and struggled for form at times, March/April 2019 he really stepped up his game for me.

Prop is a position that we find hard to fill .Philbin gives everything when he comes on but we need another sub to give our ever present Hill & Cooper a rest. Perhaps even Hughes could step up to prop & become the new versatile ,slot-in-anywhere Ben Westwood.

I watched the Wigan v Leeds Magic game on Saturday & was amazed at the effort Crosby was putting in compared to when he signed for us. I know he had personal tragedy problems but we should have expected to at least see a glimmer of him at his best.

Perhaps our strategy for the future is to bamboozle opponents with electrifying back line play & go round defences instead of trying to punch a hole through the middle. That would be awesome.

I think Crosby is done, he's turned out for Leeds for about 50 minutes since joining them 18 months ago.

It's a shame what's happened to him since he left Wigan.

Re latu, I was reading another article on the warriors talking about loan players, and thought we could send him there to get fit.

It really is poor if professional sportsmen can't even keep themselves fit enough to do what is a job. A club should really only expect to be doing the minimum tweaking of fitness levels for a sports professional.

It's a massive red flag for me when you get players like that.

If they can't keep themselves fit their attitude in other areas is going to be bad too.

Remember when Appo joined from the French league. Plange signed him but then he said he couldn't pick him because he wasn't up to fitness required. By the time he was fit Plange had been sacked and it was Cullen who got to use him. That little episode was a preview of what Appo would be like later on.

Whenever you hear a coach making comments about a player that suggest he's not fit enough (and its not related to injury) the alarm bells go off. You know if a coach is throwing that out about a player in public he's seriously fed up. Also you know his teammates will think he's a waste of space.

No. You’re taking it out of context.

I’m replying to the posts about how about how much of a difference he can make if we’re playing ‘5 drives and a kick’.

Imagine how good he could be on the back of Austin, Widdop and Ratchford playing off the cuff.

Latu is a complete mystery to me. I know we need support in the Prop department but what analysis was done prior to his signing. Was he either recovering from injury or had just not played because he was down the oecking order at his previous club? To see him feature as little as he has is worrying. Other than Price stating that he was not ready having, one might assume, been on some kind of intensive fitness programme does raise cause for concern especially when when have another prop (Sita) who for whatever reason doesn't do big minutes at all. Is Latu here just for 2020 ? He may well undercut the unfortunate Dallas Mead's appearance record at this rate.

We signed him on a 2 year contract so he's here next year aswell. He's had no injury worries, he's just not got picked because he's been crap. All hype and full of potential but he's never hit it. He was a panic signing as we couldn't sign anyone else, we got knocked back by 3 props and he was pretty much the only prop available.
Wasn't impressed at all when we announced his signing as he was the very bottom of the list of players we were linked too.
You never know though Greg Inglis could be the type of player Latu will look at and learn from with proffessionalism etc and may kick him up the butt and finally gett his in gear.......but i very much doubt it.

At 28, cant see Latu wanting to be picking up stuff off IG to enhance his career or positivity. He he doesn’t/hasn’t a want to know now, he’ll never will.
He’s been selected in a playing squad with getting some time on a field 9 times in 3 years. I think that speaks volumes.

Looks like we've been shafted there out of desperation because there is a shortage of decent props. Leeds signing Crosby on a 3 year deal was a signal of that.

I wonder why there's a shortage of good props coming through junior systems. We've been hearing for years that youth coaches ignore ball playing talent because they are obsessed with size and athleticism, you'd have thought if that were the case at least we'd be churning out some Stuart Fielden-style battering ram props.

I would love to have Paul Wood and Carvell back in this current side.

That's a very good point Sally, and yeah throw Paul Wood and Carvell on our bench and we'd be looking VERY threatening

And oh for a pack from Morley, Monaghan, Carvell, Harrison, L.Anderson, Westwood, Hill, Clark, Cooper.