We missed him last night, he is vital to our team performance.

We'll have to agree to differ on Thurston. You don't score over a hundred tries by picking a pass. Quoting him saying he wasn't a great runner of the ball is disingenuous. He wasn't a great runner of the ball but he was a good one! You're talking about a player who is one of the game's all time greats. No one is going to be harder on him and his game than himself. Put it this way, if Farrimond reaches Thurston levels of running game I'll be more than happy. I suspect so will Peet and Farrimond himself.

With regards to them playing together I don't disagree that now isn't their time against the top teams. But we don't play top teams all the time. There's no reason not to try them against London (England duty notwithstanding) for example. That said, Cas and London after Friday are now gone and Hull are possibly on the up so I agree it probably won't happen in the immediate future.

JT scored a lot of tries from close range; how well I remember, "Don't fall for Thurston's dummy!" What a cracking player he was, and a top guy too.

Hang on a minute Jon! You're being disingenuous again. I never said he was a strike half. I said he had a running game, which he did. Also Deacon scored 85 tries in just shy of 400 games. Thurston scored Scored 109 in a similar amount. Even basic maths tells you that's around 25% more than Deacon and that's before we even get to the fact that he did it in a much, much tougher competition including State of Origin! The comparison should be with Andrew Johns who had a similar strike rate in the same comp, not Deacon who scored far fewer in an easier comp. In fact Jerome Luai who you put forward as a half with a running game has scored 30 tries in 140 games. A try ratio worse than Thurston's! If you're going to be that flexible with the truth I think the discussion has run it's course.

Moto: Thurston scored plenty from distance as well. More importantly, his dummy resulted in a lot of tries that other players scored too He didn't have to put the ball over the whitewash himself every time to have a running game. And in any case, scoring short range tries is still a running threat. It certainly isn't organisational play or "picking a pass" as Jon would have you believe.

Edit: I'm just rewatching the 1st SOO from this year and almost all the tries have come from a different player's running threat than the one who put it down over the whitewash.