Yeah i'm excited for this season, I've finally got a team that i'm happy with the forward pack, the backs are Quality and our halves are Quality. One of those things were the majority of the squad weren't playing well so to continually pin point Widdop, who most games had nobody backing him up, nobody running angles for him etc is odd and a forward pack living off Hill and Cooper. I'm very Happy we've brought in Mulhern and Butler and genuinely think they will spark us in to life forward wise and are exactly what we need. This season for me now will be down to how the boys are coached and how are attacking plays are set up. COYW!!!

I appreciate we are way off topic by now but I wonder if the strengthening of the prop position will make our 20 metre out attack more effective?

Well we all like to see length of the field tries, but let’s be honest, they don’t happen often, you could count them on one or two hands through SL in a season.
If we are often within 20 meters with tackles in the bag, I can assure you, we’ll be winning more games than constantly defending our own line, burning up energy with repeated tackling, while we will waiting for that line break that has the field chasing for 60 odd plus meters.

The modern game is, play most of the rugby in your opponent’s half, and it’s more than likely you’ll come out the winner.

Presumably Hill and Coops will be a bit fresher in the 2nd half after being spelled by two genuine bench props, but it seemed to me that we were stagnant from 10-20 yards out due to a lack of ideas and practiced moves.

I put myself through the pain of watching the highlights of the 2018 GF the other day. One thing I noticed amongst lots of interesting things was that for Wigans last try was their ability to create a 5 on 4 situation for Manfredi to score.
All down to Tomkins turning up on their right sided attack.
We have discussed the lack of chances that we create for Charnley and there are other reasons but I think opponents know that Ratch hardly ever pops up on the right edge and therefore the defence will always number up correctly so it can be relatively easy to defend against us if the numbers are always right.
In terms of the new props our drop off in intensity when the starting front row has a rest has been noticeable for years, back to Hill and Sims. Teams have had the chance to come back at us and we have been unable to keep the momentum and are often back peddling waiting for Hill and Cooper to come back on, so if the new props can keep the momentum in attack and minimise in the drop off in defence then I am sure that will help to create opportunities.
Another plus for our attack will be Toby King to right centre, he reads a game really well and knows when to pass.

A good point, as I've seen Ashton pop up on the right, make an extra man and contribute to a score. It's not only Ratch attacking the opponents left side of defence, but both half backs could appear there at the same time. Same said about attacking the opponents right side of defence. We just didn't look like we could put on any sort of a move in 2020.

For the time being all we have strengthened is the depth of the pack. We won't know if the pack is actually strengthened until we see how Butler and mulhern fit in and to a degree how sita and doro respond to their arrivals. On paper Crosby was a good signing to strengthen our pack but it didn't work out and the same could happen with both of our new arrivals.

We can definitely keep Hill, Cooper and philbin fresher but we need one of the new arrivals to fit straight in and make an immediate impact which should happen, but we have been burnt before and there are lots of threads on here criticising the success of the clubs recruitment over the past decade or so. I really hope they both go well they have lots of potential, we could do with them being the signings to replace hill and Cooper in the long term, let's hope they are.

Just to bring this back up, if you have a look around the boards, still some stress regarding props, leeds obviously have brought tetavano in on a wedge, but they've also followed that up with signing an absolute nobody.

Wakefield fans are still scrabbling about thinking they're a prop or 2 short and hoping that battye becomes available.

And wigan fans are doing their nut that they've still got clubb, clark and burgess, and not got much firepower up front at all., as i said a while back it seems to be a very difficult position to recruit (well) in, almost as difficult has halfback.


Whilst the 2 we've brought in aren't international world beaters, we may have done some smart business, just in being able to get them in.

Time will tell

I guess the eternal optimist in me thinks the 2 new props HAVE to bring more to the party than Latu has...don’t they?
In terms of 20 metre attack I was thinking that fresher props will “bend the line*” more thus creating space!
* I feel a bit dirty using this phrase... I suppose it’s a Skyism

Yeah i saw this aswell, was bored the other night and read through the others teams topics. And yeah most clubs are saying the same thing about the prop situation which surprises me as i thought we were the ones that had been struggling and everyone was happy.

So does this overall prop shortage mean the club are fighting off suitors for Sita & Latu ?

I think the missing word is “quality”. Do I win?

As clothes props perhaps.....

Maybe it's the wage that puts them off (£s per minute on field)

I think i was most impressed with Sita when he played on the wing once against Hull & ran over his opposite number . I think he had come on as a sub & went off again pretty quickly. We have signed some carp in recent years.