Doubt if he will leave Catalans and the lifestyle he is living there.

Could possibly have been tempted with the Marquee spot that Toby King currently has, but King has another year with us after this season.

Our right side defence was up against it last night with the likes of the experienced Hall & Gildart & the explosive maverick called Lewis , but they coped & will improve & i thought our overall defence won the game ,helped of course by a couple of HKR handling errors with our try line at their mercy. The Tyrone May try & his cut out pass for the right winger were superb rugby moments.
As for the goal kicking ,both teams suffered , but if Thewlis is to be persevered with he needs to be getting plenty of training field kicking practice in with Ratchford coaching him...a great goalkicker & no need for the expense of a RU kicking coach. Great to see Burgess sticking with the kids though & i thought last night's game was played in great spirit by both teams ,.very few penalties & a reduction in head contact.
Good game ,enjoyed it !

Wakefield bound

Good point. It was a clean game, that required very little whistle, and the spectacle was vastly improved as a result. Well done to both teams, and let's hope this becomes the norm.

Holroyd did a good stint in tackling, but it was he who gave an away a soft penalty that swung the 1st half momentum to KR when we were 10 zero up.
He technically had us 10-12 down at the break. So for all his good stuff, his daft penalty undermined the 1st half.

I thought we got away with two points that we shouldn't have had. Still, I'd rather be second best and win, than outplay your opposition and get beat.

I must be easily pleased but I'm pretty optimistic from what I've seen so far. Some new faces e.g. Holroyd look good to me. New signing Fitzgibbon is a plus. Looks like we are on a par with Cats/HKR/Leeds but Wigan & Saints are, of course, the Challenge. I was very worried how game was going with high tackles after the first two games but that seems to have settled down too. I like Sam Burgess, honest, very high profile but good bloke and glad he's with Wire.

Yes rubber ... but he's not bad is he? Gets stuck in like hell for a young 'un.

I thought we were quite bad. Our defense was woeful so not sure where the praise for that is coming from. They continually marched up field with relative ease and it was only their own errors, or lack of detail when it came to finishing chances that gave us a look in at limping past them. Burgess talked beforehand about suring up our defense and then we go leak a load of points. We're not going to challenge anything of significance this season.

It’s probably going to seem a very long season to you.

Less so when we scrape the play offs and go out first round again though. If people want to celebrate mediocrity then alright. I guess I'm just unwilling to be impressed by us beating an off the boil KR by 2 points. Such is our level now.

I guess people see what they want to see. I see progress, I don’t suppose anyone has seen perfection.

It is correct of course about getting marched downfield & it has been a problem for several seasons. The last ditch defence does seem to respond better than defence in general play which results in us getting the ball back in the wrong parts of the pitch.

Part way through the game on Thursday night I had flashbacks to the game against Hull FC at Magic weekend last year.
In that game we scored 2 early tries but the wheels started to fall off.
The difference is that last year FC scored a number of tries without anybody laying a finger on them and just after they scored our defenders were looking at each other wondering who should have been responsible for making the challenge.
We have been fragile and flakey for a number of years and once we go behind in a game we start to panic and the heads drop.
Thursdays game was different. From memory we went behind twice but we didn't start to panic with things like crazy offloads or give the ball away through rushed incorrect play the balls.
In previous years we would see an inevitable drop off when our starting front row had a rest (Hill / Cooper, previously Hill / Sims) but I don't see the same level of drop off when our starting props are off the pitch.

It is early days and it is baby steps but I have seen enough difference in the first 4 games to be encouraged that we have a different mentality and will be competitive.
Hull KR are no mugs either. If we finish higher than them then we will be looking at a home game in the first round of the play offs.

Just a little point. We didn’t get marched downfield too often on Thursday, there were only around 5 penalties between the 2 sides. The discipline in the last 2 games has been excellent.