Quote: Boss Hog "We still have room on the Quota, for one more player, to take us up to seven players.'" unless we've signed this guy as rumoured - https://www.bulldogs.com.au/teams/telst ... n-wakeham/

Quote: Boss Hog "We still have room on the Quota, for one more player, to take us up to seven players.'" unless we've signed this guy as rumoured - https://www.bulldogs.com.au/teams/telst ... n-wakeham/

This statement has been valid for nine seasons now.

Last time we were in this relegation fight we had Briers. He had probably his worst season with us but was instrumental in unexpected away wins at Hull and Leeds which kept us above Salford.

Any one know if he's any good?

I know I sound like a broken record but if we are in the market for a halfback then we need to make sure they are left handed or at least equally competent at passing to their right. For the last 9 years we have picked halfbacks because they were the best available but not necessarily the best fit for the team.
I feel that this is one of the reasons that Ratchford looks a bit lost, because he is playing on the right. Same for William's until he played on the left for England and then we decided to ask him to switch sides. This subject has been one of the most disappointing aspects of our recruitment over the years. We had Widdop on the left and sign William's so to fit them both in the team we shift Widdop to fullback to allow William's to play on the left.
Theo Fages would have been ideal. Not a superstar or a game breaker but really competent on that side of the pitch.

Austin would prefer to throw the dummy than pass to his right and the rest of the league soon figured that out.

There are a couple of glimmers of hope in that from what I have seen of Riley Dean he looks pretty strong passing to his right. If we pick up a few wins and are safe I would stick Dean on the bench to come on as interchange hooker to give him a bit more confidence in his defence. Saints had the luxury of domination that enabled them to do that with Dodds. Also Dufty looks like he favours popping up at Fullback on the right side so hopefully we can be a threat on both sides of the pitch.
I know Holmes has had a bit of stick on here and previous to that Jack Hughes has similar but maybe some of those problems were not completely down to the second rower and maybe more to do with the halfback on that side. Just like Currie has taken a bit less stick since William's has moved to the left edge.

Interesting point this. It would be interesting to see what Holmes' metres per carry were. If his low metres made v KR (20m I think it was) was per 2/3 drives, then it's not as bad if he saw little ball. I didn't see the game though and I'm certain fans who were there could provide a better perspective.

It was 6 drives for Holmes and the half-backs do NOT explain his pitiful performances. At one point he was presented with a glaring overlap where he only had to ship it onto Minikin but just went to ground on the last tackle.

With regards to players being weak passing to their right, I think Ashton is on the wrong wing.

He was initially only selected on our left wing, because Charnley was already ensconced on our right wing.

Given the number of poor passes that Ashton has thrown to supporting players when he has made a break, it looks to me that he is another player who is weak passing to their right.

Not sure how good Thewlis and Wrench are passing to their right, if they replaced him on our left wing though?

Just to clarify. I am not defending Holmes here. I do think he has been well below where I expected.
However that side of the pitch has seen a lot of disruption. As far as I can recall we have had

Right edge halfbacks. William's Matautia, Dean, Ratchford.

Right Edge Centres - Matautia, Wrench, and I think Ratchford has played there.

Right Wing, Charnley, Wrench, Thewlis, Minikin

Opposition teams know that there is not a decent combination where all the passes are on the button and will try and push up on the ball players to force the indecision. We saw that in the opening 5 mins of the Cas game where Riley Dean panicked and tried to offload to Matautia. It looks like the left edge is set for the rest of the season but I could not guess what the right edge will look like this week as it looks like names are drawn out of a hat.

Dont want to put too much pressure on Dufty here but I hope he can bring something to the right edge. At least when Williams was on that side there was the odd line break with space being created for Wrench and Co. Since William's has moved there has been very little threat and if we only have any threat on one side it is easy for opposition coaches.

That is poor. An average of 3.3m per carry.

I'm really not as worried about the attack as I am the defence. In the last four games that we have lost we have scored 22 points in two of them and 24 in the other two. I've looked back at the last 40 games for the other SL teams and only four other teams have lost games having posted a score of 22 or higher.

Powell is absolutely correct in that we shouldn't be losing games where we have scored so many points. Whether a player can pass to the left or right shouldn't affect his ability to complete a tackle, prevent an offload, leave an overlap or conceed a penalty. We are gifting the opposition points and teams know that they can come back at us.

Yep. Defence is my main concern. We seem to have a totally different system from last year.

A defence that seems to retreat rather than advance, even in our own ten. A try always seems inevitable, that was after Powell saying pre-season that our defence was excellent and he only needed to perform a little tweak. His little tweak was clearly Frank Spenceresque.

On paper, the right hand side I would want is Thewlis on the wing, Wrench at centre, Nicholson second row, Dean in the halves. I think that this weekend it will be Minikin, Matautia, Holmes, Ratchford. I can just say it on here though, Powell's putting his career on the line.