Personally I don't think he was.

Depends what you want to see in a hooker.

He didn't attack the line enough for me on Sunday.

Maybe we are spoilt watching Lunt every week.

Wood made 39 tackles in the middle of the field - not bad for a small guy! Second only behind bailey. Now he didn't make too many metres no - but then he's not a running hooker like say roby, he's a distributer- he did that well he made no errors. He did however make as much distance up the park as our biggest man-
If you want to point any fingers point them at the favourite Eorl Crabtree - a massively disappointing 4 metres a carry......

Think we'll bounce back in a positive way and win this but it will be a tough game. I think you could see our stop-start beginning to the season in that display and they'll all have benefited from a really tough Sunday.

It's important the forwards have an real impact game as the I thought all the big 4 were disappointing - although I thought Anderson's use of them was strange at times - and they need to get in the groove ahead of the Rhino's game.

I'm certainly not having a go at the lad.

Like you say jools he is more of a distributor where as personally I like a more direct hooker.

I also feel that we should be giving young lads a chance when we have injuries, especially against teams like Widnes, and I mean that with respect to Widnes.

We did...Wire away then Salford away.

So we did- tried to forget the awful Salford game.....

Giants hot favourites for this game, widnes 3/1 to win which is a decent price.

crabtree`s lack of yards can be attributed to hkr 3 man tackling him every time he got the ball .they really ganged up on him , no problem with that . what we should have done was throw the ball wider as there must have been gaps . but no , especially in the second half we gave him the ball as a matter of routine , at times he was standing still not expecting a pass , but he still got it , and a 3 man reception committee . one of the many examples of our poor play in the second half .

well said

I don't buy that. There were just as many tackling jerry. If Crabtree is taking the ball standing then he's not doing it right and he ought to run onto the ball. The size of him even if he gets tackled he ought to be able to get a quick ptb. He was the biggest disappointment for me last week.

Eorl is getting found out a bit beacuse teams are going for his legs rather than his upper body and being pushed off. He needs to turn that to his advantage and quicken his play the ball or offload before contact to another player running into the gap.

Durham, do you mean like happened exactly for Robbos first try last weekend?

Doing it once ain't good enough wadski. His go forward hasn't been good enough. Eorl used to have a great offload, NB coached it out of him-he needs to get it back or put some effort into making more yards than jerry up the middle. I like Eorl and his defence is very good- but if he isn't giving us space or quick ptbs we won't win games. I personally don't think he's been that great- and I've not seen more tackling him than others- but if he's targeted that means there are gaps to exploit and he's not helping us do that.

I actually agree with Jools, but whenever i've been critical of Eorl in the past, which isn't very often admittedly, i've been told to shut up and how dare i criticise a club legend. I comment on things i see and i, again, dont think the Big man has performed anything like he can - his offload used to be his strength, he colud get the ball away with 3 men on him no trouble before - fair enough he's marked out of the game usually nowadays which doesn't help - he needs to get that bit of a nasty streak he seemed to have a few years ago back.

Watch him have an absolute blinder tonight !!

You cannot compare the yards a forward makes to those of a back. A lot of backs carries are fielding kicks where they will have made 7/8 metres before contact.
It is only two games into the season but for me the only issue with Crabtree is he has only made 5.78 metres per carry which is below average but then again look at Kopczak at 3.83 metres per carry which is shocking yet no one mentions him.
Crabtree in 2 games has still made 214 metres (by far the highest of the Giants forwards) and 65 tackles with zero misses so i really think if we are looking for a scapegaoat after one 40 minute below standard team performance then we need to look elsewhere.

It is also difficult to make ground as a forward when the opposition pack (Hull Kr) are generally allowed to stand two metres in fronot of the referee at every play the ball.