Is it only me, but I don,t get what Lam is seeing with playing all of these young guys together. There is no doubt that in 3 or 4 years time POTENTIALLY we have the makings of a very big good pack of forwards.
However at the moment and for most of last season we are being pushed around the park by bigger more experinced packs.
For all of their obvious potential let's be brutally honest here about these young guys, for all of their heart and workrate and defensive effort and lets me say here they offer loads in these departments, what do Partington and Smithies offer with ball in hand, no go forward and not particularly skilful at this stage of their careers, because of their size I think Byrne , Kilner and Havard are better prospects although they still need to develop the strength to take on the big guys week in week out, our metre making at the moment is non existent and through no fault of these kids, they should not have to be trying to do it week in week out when clearly they are physically not up to it.
Equally and more worryingly the reason Lam puts them in each week is because the older forwards are lazy and underperforming. when you have a pack out on the park that contains Oli, Isa Faz and Smithies our threequarters are bigger.
If we are going to achieve anything this season and give the likes of Hastings and Smith something to work with Lam needs to be getting Bullock, Flower, Burgess Clark and Greenwood out there fully fit, motivated and playing to their full potential, and just drip feed one of these young kids in each week not playing them all together.
I am all for giving kids a chance but not all together at the same time.
It is Lams job to get a tune out of these older guys or move on an bring someone in who can.

A simple question really needs asking, who is our go forwards forward? We have not had a player who will bend the line since Gabe got his marching powder, sorry orders. We bought Burgess but he is never going to carry the whole team and he is injured. Partington and Smithies are not front line prop/middles. I understand the idea of finding your front if you get a quick PTB but theory is one thing. You can imagine the masterplan where a player finds their front and a quick PTB allows forwards to sweep around the side punching a hole in the retreating defence. What actually happens is that there is a wrestle on the floor and a single undersized and/ or slow fat forward waddles upfield, on their own, straight into the biggest players on the field moving forwards to meet them. This is the point where plan B should be engaged, perhaps changing the point of attack or using a subtle passing move to slice open the defence. What actually happens is that we carry on as though nothing was wrong.

He was partnered with Smith this week but the point stands. Hastings needs to remember he hasn’t go a bull dozer like Josh Jones as his back rower

Many a truth spoken in jest.

Agree totally with this I agree with giving the young lads a chance but all are lightweight and need some experienced forwards around them not throw them in together. We were short of big forwards against Cas who had a weakened side but our team selection completely evened it up.