You don't need to be big to be powerful. Power comes from core strength not from sheer size. Look at Bateman, not a big bloke but deceptively strong for his size. I'd take a mobile pack over a large immobile pack any day of the week.

Now, a quick assessment of what I think was our downfall last night.
1) 6 missed tackles in the first 11 minutes
2) I lost count of how many times we had a player on the floor or a single marker siuation. Houghton had a field day jumping out from 9. This has been a recurring problem for me and was something we were always very good at - Getting numbers in, peeling off correctly and slowing down the PTB. We seem to get pinged for penalties an awful lot in the rucks which indicates we need to spend some more time working on A, B & C defence.
3) Our pivots played far to much off the line, allowing Hull to simply map off us.
4) Our style of play demands complete discipline and camping in the opposition 30. We never built pressure until the 60th minute, then we let it go to easily.

On the upside, Tomkins' try - Had that been Sarg, he'd have kicked. Tomkins took the line on and it will bear more fruit. His link play has been missing for a long time.

Onwards and upwards. Have faith.

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.