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Yates moves straight to favoured open side prop,an obvious mutual admiration situation between him and the coach.Mike Lawrence into favoured blind side prop, bit of a surprise. Jones into 13 shirt.Can't recall him doing any ball handling for Salford,but loose forward is often just used as a third prop in this day and age.
If Cudjoe continues with the form he showed when he returned last year they won't be able to leave him out.
They do often play down the significance of the squad numbers though.

If Yates & co can get the team going forward this season, having Gavet from the interchange could be a good option to have as his main strength seemed to be attracting defenders and providing 2nd phase or alternatively slithering out of their grasp to get to the ground for a quick play the ball.

I don't think the coaches attach that much significance to the squad numbers. We fans often read too much into them. I think Jones has expressed a desire to play loose forward in the hope that he can make the World Cup squad in that role. I hope his performances there for the Giants impress the England coach enough to achieve his goal.

Interesting that our starting props have both played a lot as 13s. We've definitely gone for light and mobile, both can do big minutes which I guess with the 6 again rule should work in our favour, just hope we can make the metres!

It looks like to me we will be playing a quick and expansive game . 5 drives and a kick will be gone.does seem to be the way the game is going though

Looks as though Butler may have got himself fit.!!!!!!!

Butler Out for another few months with a different injury, don’t expect to see him anytime soon

The lad doesn't have much luck injury wise.

Although that probably works both ways, if the bigger forwards dominate the collision then the chances are the ruck will become messy and hard to control, resulting in infringements and 6 agains. The only real positive of a more agile light weight front row in my eyes bigger minutes (although not always the case) and probably better footwork at the line.

All of that makes sense HV. We have lacked speed around the ruck - in both attack and defence - for the last few seasons which has often put the first receiver on the back foot or given the offence room to get up speed. I'm sure that Ian Watson will be looking to address this but the lack of size could be an issue especially when we have to start from our line.Time will tell.