We miss Micky Mac terribly, he makes our pack tick. We're nothing without him.

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.

It was only when Clubb and Sutton came on we got some go forward, Crosby and Mossop were awful - and we lost the game when they came back on 2nd half - both are way too slow in defence.

Isa actually had a better game at least he tried - Tomkins J was totally non-existant all game. TT added a bit when he came on - not just size but enthusiasm which was sadly lacking from some.

It is not pure size at fault - our forwards just did not perform well enough.

Maybe someone can tell me, because this size thing comes up a lot, but whenever I see us play, the player who always happens to give us the most go forward is John Bateman, who just so happens to be our smallest forward. As it is, we've got Crosby (110kg), Ben Flower (109kg), Clubb (105kg), Mossop (114kg) and Tautai (114kg) in our front row. It's not exactly tiny. I can't help but think it's just that we play a different game that requires different things from our props.

With some teams, their props (and not just their props) receive the ball at pace. Wigan's props typically receive the ball flat-footed, or, at best, slowly lumbering forward. You don't punch holes in any defence like that.

They are just saving their energy for the "business end" part of the season.

What does it take for Ryan Sutton to barge through and put the ball down on the line? Not the first time this season he's had the ball over the line and dropped it IIRC.

I think had he scored there we would have won.

Sutton occasionally shows aggression and hopefully will kick on and eventually start to do more minutes per game.
He doesn't rip up any trees at the moment but as he matures I hope he can develop into a physical and aggressive prop.

Julien Bousquet is quality, would love him in our pack.

I've just read that when we re-signed Mossop, we have him a 3 year deal which has amazed me. For a guy that struggled with form before he left and came back with serious injury doubts, that is a pretty poor.

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.