Yes and then stand off the following year for NZ for their tour of England.

By the looks of the clubs press release, we seem to have him earmarked for the centre spot, so possibly Naiquama on his wing, if that comes off too?

Ratchford

Naiquama
Hiku
Atkins
Lineham

Positions 1 - 5 look pretty decent then. Half back, impact prop and possibly second row left to fill for me.

interestingly we seem to be the last two clubs in the running for Joe Wardle, who I think has been playing in the back row for Newcastle?

According to league express or the other paper cant remember which one but it seems Wardle is going to Castleford.

Yes i saw that, there was another report I saw that suggested we were on of two clubs to be in the running, he favoured Castleford, but we had come in with a more lucrative offer - don't we always?!?

Wardle for me would be a good signing at centre if we got him, but never seen him at second row so couldn't really comment how effective he is there? I think once currie comes back it will add fire power to the squad, and I would drop Hughes for savelio for awhile.
I really like hughes but like most of our players this year they are just not performing, but when savelio plays he puts she loads of effort in which is what we need at the moment.
Isn't Matty Russell off contract at the end of this year aswell?

No, signed an extended deal through to 2019 late last year.

Oh dear

At least it saves us playing Jack Hughes at fullback.
A lot of people seem to have problems with Russell's scooting from dummy half which does seem to help with getting us upfield. Against Wigan ,much of our progress upfield was from dummy half scoots but because most of the scoots were done by Clark, Dwyer ,Patton ,Ratchford & Lineham it wasn't an issue.

The trouble with scooting from dummy half is that it is usually our entire 1 dimensional attack game. If a player scoots it's difficult to start a second phase of attack as support runners don't know when or where the next phase will start from, making reading a play and timing of runs very difficult for the attackers but not for defenders. It's effective when players aren't back in to position to defend as a unit and also to take a bit of work load off the forwards.

We just scoot far too much, and in Russels case it's about all he offers since he lost the ability to catch, he hasn't developed his passing game sufficiently in my views still reluctant to pass and passes forward too often. He's like Evans both try hard and are useful as cover but are too limited in their games to be in the first team.

Yes, i think PLAN A must be "scoot from dummy half" in our training manual.

Regarding Savelio also misses a shed load of tackles. Very poor defender

This, the cons really outweigh the pros with russell.

Also, with a game plan like the above, as we saw last year and very much so this season, you get an unsympathetic ref who allows the ptb to be slowed down to a dying dog, and we're completely neutralised. Wigan especially have ed us with their persistant use of 3 and 4 men always in the tackle, plus last year they made sure one of those always rolled backwards towards the acting half, (in)directly interfering but not getting penalised for it.

We're limiting ourselves by using this as plan a.

Just looked at the stats - Russell is the 7th highest player in the league for runs from DH. He's ahead of most other team's starting hookers!

It's clearly a core of our gameplan, but the bigger issue is this affects our signings and player coaching/development.

With the exception of Ratchford and the kids, our back line and second row are interchangeable in both size, and worryingly, core skillset. This is no coincidence.

Russell was electric when we signed him. Quick, powerful, skipped past tackles. Take those attributes and coach him as a proper winger, he could have been be doing a similar job to Eden (also a fullback convert).

Unfortunately he's been molded into the wrong player. We need proper wingers playing on the wing. Maybe he has to go, maybe there's still hope should we see a change on the coaching front, but either way the blame shouldn't lie on the player who is just following the coaches orders.

just filling the gaps

The scooting from dummy half tactic is certainly effective at getting us up field, we just don't know what to do when we get there.

Using Russell to Scoot was effective the first 5 or 6 games. its predicable rugby that's easy to defend.

As soon as he stands at dummy half; everyone on the opposite team, everyone in the stands, everyone watching on T.V and even the members of the international space station passing overhead at 17,150mph whist glancing at the game through a telescope knows that he's going to scoot.

Stale and predictable tactics that reeks of Richard Agar. The same happened at Hull, then at Wakefield and now us.