Strange selection and display on Thursday night.

With regards to the selection I dont quite understand starting with MM. I suppose it was to provide a bit of a better defence in the right edge at the start of the game? It is regular practice to swap hookers during a game but unusual to plan to swap halfbacks during the game? Also I was a bit surprised about the lack of experience on the bench. I would have thought that some of those would have started so that the experienced players were mixed in. When I saw the bench I thought we could end up with 2 props and a loose forward on the pitch with less than 30 SL games between them.

I remember looking at Mike cooper when we played at Murrayfield a few years ago thinking he was struggling to make the grade, He was just happy to make a tackle rather than try and dominate in defence and control the attacker. This often resulted in a quick PTB. This was the case last night and there is a lot of talk about missing Carvell and Morley etc but I thought we missed Cooper as well as Harrison, Wood and Grix. I am sure players like Evans, Riley, Currie and Laithwaite will come good for us just like Cooper did but they did appear to fall off the first contact in defence quite a bit. It took Coops 3 or 4 years to get to the level that meant he was a defender who could control and dominate.

Having said all of that the biggest disapointment to me was that we looked to be trying to play the same way that we did when Brett Hodgson and Lee Briers were here. I think that teams had been figuring out how to play against us over the last year or so. Teams managed to close Hodgson down more often than not but the plays are still the same.
I though I would see Ratchford following Asotasi / Hill / Waterhouse looking for an offload but it didnt seem to happen.
It was all very familiar just with far poorer execution.

Mike Cooper never made the grade and never will glad to see the back of him

agree with posts re poor performance thurs,but sad to see the same old moaners appear to be taking delight from it!We had out a very young team and yes tony smith made some positional mistakes,but lets take it for what it was and move forward to better days.Also even taking into account performance were was our famous crowd support we were outsung outchanted and outplayed!!!

Mike Cooper was the player with the highest tackle completion rates at the club. He certainly would have been a better bench option than what we had on Thursday.

I can't help but feel Smith has dropped the ball big time on the players he has allowed to leave.

Bullcrap of the highest order. Cooper is a fine player and will only get better for his spell at St George.

Cooper's game is better suited for NRL, the strong defence was probably a big factor in St George showing interest, just needs to soften up his iron hands.

Do we have first choice on Cooper if & when he comes back ?

Think the agreement is he'll be back here after 2/3 years.

It's now Saturday pm and I still can't believe how inept we were.
It's unlike me to keep on moaning - honest ! - but it's really got on my wick.
We were 2nd best in every department - and 3rd in some !

At least if we get a few beatings there won't be any need for "meaningless round" posts when we're back on the Mighty Wire roller coaster.