Bateman is incredibly strong for his size. He's got the potential to be one of the best players in the world as long as he's played back row. Love watching him play.

Garry I don't think we have a "style" of play its so laborious and unfuntional to even contemplate giving it a name.
As for building up pressure we haven't built up any pressure on any team for over 2 years that for me is the main reason we are so rank bad. We have zero intensity and even less discipline.
Rugby is a simple game - you run harder and tackle harder than your opponent and if you fail in that at times during the game your teammates help you out to recover the situation. We don't do any of that except for say Bateman, Clubb and Manfredi
We are a bunch of badly coached unfit wrestlers who have no aggression and even less character.

I'd put Kyle Shelford and Ben Austin in the first team in place of Mossop and Crosby.

If only 1 could go I'd put forward Shelford, he's an aggressive big hitter and though isn't very tall he is strong and puts his all into every tackle.

The title of the thread is lack of pack size and I think that's an issue in the reserves and 19s too, with Shelfords lack of height but bag fills of aggression particularly in defence does anyone think he could be the ideal replacement for McIllorum if Shelford was taught the hooker role and practiced it in the 19s? From what I've seen of the 9s in the reserves they seem small and podgy whereas Shelford is solid.

Someone always suggests hooked for those players who are good but small. I said the same about Gregson a few weeks ago. I wonder when we should be looking to start moving players round. Should we be looking at Waterworth and writing him off at u19s level and replacing him with a backrower. Perhaps someone with a sports science background could fill me in. Personally I would like to see a fully fledged reserves to work through these issues.

It worked with Terry Newton in moving a back rower to 9.

Yes, it can work but we don't want a pack of 6 number nines. I thought, at one time, that we were preparing for the game to go to eight interchanges by looking for smaller forwards who could do more minutes. That seems to have been shelved and our small nimble forwards have got fat.