So, from this thread we should be dropping Drinkwater, Currie, Philbin, Dudson, Dufty. Which 5 next week?

Currie was awful. So many missed tackles from half hearted attempts. It was a mistake to give him a contract extension last year.

I've not read the whole thread, but thewlis,, Hayes, holroyd, could cover 3 of those. Philbin can still do a job.
Dancing chris would be as effective as dudson!!

Discipline destroyed us in that second half, first 20mins were quality, then it just went downhill from there.
Dudson i think at the minute is just a stop gap until we can pick up a new prop. Hopefully Bullock will be back soon fit and in form. Luke Thomas looked so good in pre-season and i was looking forward to seeing him get game time, such a shame with his injury.
Fitzgibon looked good, not sure why him and Currie swapped their usual sides of the field?
Musgrove, Harrison, and Vaughan were good as was Crowther. Philbin was ok, plenty of effort and energy as usual.
Halves looked a bit clueless, King was all over the field looking for work which was good to see.
I'm hoping this is one of those get rid of the cobwebs and rustiness kind of games, and we'll pick up a gear next round. If we can't beat Hull next week with all the players missing and half a forward pack that will ring alarm bells.
But nobody panic nobody panic, still plenty of time to fix issues and get solid combos going.

I’m almost a little relieved that we didn’t snatch it at the end. It could have been another example of papering over the cracks. Lots of questions to be answered, but the main one has to be discipline and resilience. It’s been mentioned that we look fitter, and we do, but we still crack first when going set for set.

The Abdul kick that Lindrop drops, the Drinkwater kick that he slices, the kick that Ikavalu returns from in goal to make 40 yards… all of these are examples on the first half where instead of keeping the pressure on, we turned the gun on ourselves. Even their first try, that’s an awful kick where that have no expectation to score, simple catch and we should close the half out and go I. 4-0. That, and a poor read by Wrench for the second try straight after half time and we’re chasing.

The game has to work out its stance on head contact through, its so stop start it’s becoming unwatchable. Not one to give credit to RU, but they have the system where a yellow is issued, the incident can be reviewed by the video refs to see whether to escalate to a red or not, rather than having that dilemma on the field. And the incidents where Philbin, King, Nikorima (at least twice) staying down to make sure the tackle gets reviewed is ridiculous, they should have to go for a HIA if they stay down to stamp out the milking of penalties. When a team has to have music played to the waiting stadium to plug the gaps while innocuous tackles get reviewed, it’s gone wrong somewhere. There are enough breaks in a game where retrospective action can be taken where an advantage has been allowed to play, should a card be required.

How can Smiths spear tackle, driving a players head into the ground end up with the same penalty as a player running into Jordan, scandalous, the game is corrupt

It is frustrating. Red cards used to be reserved for dangerous and malicious actions, but now there’s a lot of technical penalties that fall into that category.

I completely accept that the game has a duty and responsibility to protect players from head impacts, but the players must enter the pitch knowing the risks associated with the game, including accidental impact and collisions which they have contributed to. The Cas red card is a disgrace of a decision, the Wigan player purposely stoops to put their weight and momentum on the front foot, by doing that they have themselves put their head
I go the target area for the defender. It’s a technical penalty, but not a red card.

Sadly, we’re officiating the game knowing there are ambulance chasing lawyers waiting in the car park.

Very concerned that red cards are going to spoil so many games this year. It is just too easy to get a red card. Players milking the situation has, very annoyingly, stepped up a gear too.

We should get the same lawyers as used by boxing and MMA. They seem to allow head contact.

The games leadership have now created a game where

1. Players feign injury
2. Players continuously appeal for penalties.(like every play the ball)

The great pity is that ,as the season wears on, we could be watching understrength teams competing & some clubs could be running out of bodies to put teams together.

I'm not sure it's possible to haver a full contact sport and eradicate head contact. Obviously, incidents such as the Pele one the other day are clear cut, and you can train that out of a player. However, when two players collide at a combine speed of 50 mph I don't think it's possible to raise arms to tackle and guarantee that head contact won't take place with the arm or shoulder. It's just too happening too quick. I get the seriousness of future health problems, but all I can see is us paying players to sit on the sidelines.

Not sure what the answer is. Maybe we should change all codes of rugby to tackling round the legs and make RL a mainly attacking code with some champagne flowing rugby. At least that would get some more neutral fans. 80 minutes of wrestling without the big hits, is just wrestling. I can watch re-runs of Big Daddy on UK Gold etc if I want that.

What to do?

I really enjoyed our performance in the first 20 minutes. We seemed well up for it, very aggressive line speed and we made very few errors. We sort of fell off a little bit after that but we're still good for the rest of the 1st half.

As someone mentioned earlier in the thread we still folded first for their first try really after being very much alive in the arm wrestle all half.

There are quite a lot of positives and it's definitely something we can build on. If we play like that next week we will be posting our first 2 points on the league table.

Discipline was a cause for concern, and I'd say composure was as well. If we get pinged at all for not being square next week I think Sam Burgess will be furious.

I think kendall had a decent game overall, catalans definitely got away with holding down for longer and a lot of niggling at the breakdown, which was frustrating.

I think all the lads did alright yesterday, apart from dudson who just doesn't seem to do anything in attack or defence. Philbin makes very little impact sadly. Those who are again hammering currie, he was 2nd on our tackle count, I still don't get why people think he's terrible? He really isn't, maybe injury robbed us of a truly special player, but he's still good for me. Toby King I thought was really good, great to have him back and he seems to have matured too.