Max Wood is young. He could develop into a right cracker.

Philbin and Bullock are basically the finished article and both can be improved on with careful recruitment. The Philbin of 2019 would be a different story.

Quote: Smiffy27 "I don't get carried away with stats ... as I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats.'" Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.

Quote: Smiffy27 "I don't get carried away with stats ... as I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats.'" Regarding stats I am pretty certain the club performance team review them and the players wear sports telemetry equipment such as https://www.catapult.com/solutions/athlete-monitoring. The club has a dedicated performance analyst also.

Musgrove made 30m against Hull KR, Bullock made 26m against Salford.

We play quite a rigid structure in terms of our sets of 6, you can bet Thewlis & Ashton take the first two, King or Tai take third, Vaughan takes a hit up followed by Dufty then a kick.

We know Vaughan is one of the best in the league for gaining ground, so that's his job.

If Philbin isn't being asked to take the ball up as part of the game plan he shouldn't be criticised for a lack of metres. I don't know why that is the case as Philbin was always a decent carrier of the ball, but he just isn't being used like that by Burgess. It has to be deliberate, there's no way they would get away with it otherwise...

Very true, i remember it well, i still have the shirt with monaghan 7 on
I hope he does hit his NRL best over here as he'll be great for us. I'm a fan of him anyway he just seems a bit more reserved playing for us, hopefully firmer grounds and consistant decent weather will see him firing for us.
As with Bullock, he does have the odd Game where he seems to realise he's a big dude and find his aggression. He's a cracking forward at his best but never seems to be consistant with it. Burgess must see all the good aspects of him or we wouldn't have given him a new deal.
I hope we extend Wood's contract as i think he's really good, and at 20 years old will only get better.
I really liked tge look of Luke Thomas in pre-season, i thought he was on a higher level than before so i hope he can come back and improve like Harrison has.
Fitzgibbon, Currie, Nicholson, Crowther and Holroyd are all brilliant and instill a hard hitting, skillfull backline we've not had for ages

Yeah I was just picking up on the "I'm not sure what goes through the head of those who count the stats" comment. Seemed a bit dismissive of stats to me.

Iver not really watched the nrl en masse for many a year so I wasn't familiar with our number 12, but he's a bit of a curates egg of a signing

He's probably a slightly above average nrl 2nd row, ad far as I'm aware he hasn't been in origin contention. Buy burgess obviously knew bringing him over, he would be HIS version of whatever Powell was expecting from mcguire and previously, olly Holmes.

He must be the mentor our young back rowers didn't get last year, a standard setter, a pack leader, I wouldn't cross burgess and I wouldn't short change fitzgibbon.

The other thing to think about here, is that he was being courted by Leeds, and a few posters on there have lamented missing out on his signing.

Just imagine the difference he could be making to Leeds powder puff set of forwards this year. It's as close to visually measurable as you'll get

I think leeds were favourites to sign him until fitzgibbon spoke to both Kurt gidley and Mick monaghan at the knights and they both couldnt speak highly enough of our club which i believe swung it in our favour.

He refers to himself as Lachy Fitz…..normally that kind of thing would get my goat yet with him it just makes me love him more. I spend a lot of the 80 mins watching him - he’s a brilliant competitor who loves the attrition and clearly hates losing.

Yes ... the more you question stats the more you see their limitations & how they can be used.

I don’t normally bother with stats, but after been at Halton Hospital getting surgery on on my busted elbow.. injured by playing rugby.. I was looking at the Betfred website.. I agree with third man in counting as tackles been a bit misleading because by the time the 3rd man joins, the tackles pretty much completed.. if Yates is joining I fear for Philbin getting much game time next season..

I think this is a really good post. I suspect we have not seen any major change in Philbin's performance over the last few years. But what we are seeing is a much stronger pack combined with much higher levels of motivation / effort and better coaching. So Philbin's performance looks the poorer by comparison.

Perhaps we should bask in the sunshine of a pack that is getting better by the week with ( hopefully ) Yates coming in, and the younger props coming through later on, rather than look back to the gloomy period of the last few years.

.

Do you mean Philbins performance this season look poorer? If that’s case shouldn’t he be raising his levels to match the other forwards.. or has he now reached his peak and he can’t improve on what he is doing.. Philbins defence can be sloppy at times..

i think philbin's best performances this year came at left second row, the saints game was his best game as a middle

Philbin is a home grown squad middle. I thought his efforts against KR were decent in defence, he came on and put himself about a bit.

Nobody is claiming he's a front row starting cert and he's not being treated like one. We'd be worse off without him in our squad IMO and in RL, depth of squad is vital.