Said the same thing last week and got pelted for it. It’s an absolute myth that he has a good kicking game and good hands. He has a side step and an ok running game that teams worked out after half a season.

Defending in the middle is a different beast to his current job. The skill is similar, essentially it’s putting your body infront of someone else’s. But, the trick is to be intense, move up fast, stay tall until as late as possible, don’t plant your feet and not to ‘bite’ and come out of your line.

It sounds simple, but over 350 repetitions in a game, you need to move, regardless whether the attackers are coming at you or not, you can’t let the line break.

It needs to be a habit, it needs to be disciplined. I think it would need a pre-season to make the shift.

I reckon you have gone a bit over the top here. It's called tackllng ... easy (but painful) when motivated.

My preference would be as an impact player off the bench, after he had a eye-catching start to his career in his first year at wire, he is a-bit one dimensional for me. His kicking game is decent but not as good as say Williams/Widdop, although he is capable of making a break and stepping out the line to create something..he’s been a lot better in games this year with Widdop when he eventually got into the side. But Widdop has been back to his best which has probably benefited Blake.

Unless Williams or Widdop get injured again towards the back end of the season I think he’s always going to be used from the bench, with an option to play centre/loose forward if needed. If something is required to open up the game, Blake is capable of coming off the bench & having an impact.

Last years semi-final against Salford, Ratchford played at 13 the week before and had an amazing game, and made shed loads of tackles. Then the week after Price weirdly decided to put Blake at 13 for some unknown reason and he was awful. Completely out of place, missed loads of tackles and was compmetely lost. But to be fair it was Prices decision to play him there for whatever reason even though we'd never played him there before, and Ratchford had already played there and was amazing. And Austin only played that 1 game at Loose and has never played there again as far as i know.

I don't think Austin played at loose forward vs. Salford.
He did score a very good try in the first half playing at Stand Off.
As far as I can work out Ratchford played LF with Ashton at FB.

He was named at loose, played in his normal position, defended as normal

Yep ... we have done that sort of thing a few times.

In fairness to my comment on his defence, he wasn't this bad in the previous 2 years, and on our winning run it improved somewhat.

But it was absolutely dreadful for that period of 4/5 games

Spend his money more wisely on other players

Leeds Rhinos would disagree, when they played Burrow at 9, he defended 3 in on the right edge. And he was a “motivated” individual.

The skill of defending in the middle is underrated. The difference between decent defenders and great defenders, which he would need to be if he wants to play 13 for a club trying to hunt for a championship, is highly technical.

we shouldn't be offering him a new contract.

Thanks for your efforts and all the best.

Agreed, in a salary capped sport Austin isn't someone we can keep a hold of. We have Ratchford (and Dean) to cover half back with Thewlis dropping into full back.

For this season i would be bringing him off the bench to run at tiring defences. I cant see us offering him what he would want for a new contract, and it isn't a priority unless Widdop goes and even then I personally would not be looking to keep him.

I think Austin is a good but limited player. He does a few things well but other teams have worked him out and after a great start in the first half of his first season, opponents have been able to keep him in check.

He hasn't sulked or moaned or wanted to go home, his attitude has been good, he's embraced playing for Wire, so fair play to him.

I see Austin as another example of us being done a bit by overhype from NRL agents, similar to Tyrone Roberts. In both cases we were led to believe we were getting a blue chip player who would separate us from our rivals, maybe we ended up paying a contract to reflect that too. When Austin arrived there was all that hype about him being Man of Steel before he'd even started playing.

This has probably contributed to why Austin gets a lot of stick on here. He was overhyped as a signing (not his fault). Whereas someone like Nat Wood, who had been a bench player/understudy to guys like Lam and Stacey Jones in the NRL, came over as a relative unknown, and wasn't saddled by expectations.