Likely a sad coincidence this run of injuries around internationals then. He must be hugely frustrated with it all. Whatever it is, I hope he's available for the Ashes, then the World Cup and beyond. Watching Farnworth was mouthwatering and if you could get him and Wardle on either side, you really are running with a special pair of centres.

i think part of the problem re FB is that Wigan, Wire, KR, Leigh, Leeds, Cas all have overseas FB and thats with me discounting Hull (cos i've no idea who their full back is anymore , and Connor has moved on from Hudds, so really only left with Saints, Salford and London from SL last year. So that leaves Welsby with very little competition at the minute, certainly not for the no1 international jersey

an outside shout could be Sam Tomkins but given he's retired from the game twice, that would really be an outside chance but if he goes well this year, at least it would be some competition for Welsby to push him on

The starting options are as good as we've had for a while but the drop off is pretty frightening. Those young lads are very promising and maybe one or two really smash a door down a bit like Nsemba but we'll see. What worries me is the talk of teams getting more players off the quota and then that'll allow them to fill squads with more overseas players (and not very good ones half the time).

Game over if Welsby gets injured. Had hoped that Will Pryce could provide back up at fullback but he's on the outer at Newcastle.

Is it a bad thing he’s on an outer?

May well kick on elsewhere. He’s clearly a talented player.

Pryce was my hope for somebody to push Welsby. Maybe he can start to do it next season. If Welsby went down before the Ashes, I could see Farnworth going to fullback and in fairness, that could be the complete opposite of game over but we'd then absolutely need Wardle fit and available. You couldn't move Farnworth to fullback against Australia and leave yourself with a centre pairing of Newman and King facing off against Tabuai-Fidow and Trbojevic.