I agree, it seemed to be the link in the middle of the field that was missing most. It's hard to go from a team that has three pivots in attacking moves to one that uses two.

I also thought having Hughes and Lloyd on the right didn't help create much space on the right. They are both naturally left sided and that's where they have played most of their rugby so their timing of runs was occasionally a little off.

I think Wane was right to go with Lockers against Widnes and I'm sure he'll either work to speed up the attack with Finch and Lockers in the halves or look to change things around a little.

Very much so. Against a team as poor as the Vikings, we'd normally have been creating overlaps at will, but that simply didn't happen. The forwards were doing their usual job of sucking the defensive line in, but we weren't taking advantage as we've been doing so well with Tommy in. Lockers doesn't have the "show-and-go" threat to play in the halves, IMO.

Does any one else think the Exiles match and two weeks away could have affected the teams sharpness? Also against the lesser teams we do seem to be not as sharp such as the Broncos match. We have just gone through a tough period of fixtures and I think Wane had the team hitting a peak for that period and he'll be working up again.

We certainly did, the ball stops dead when Farrell gets it and he blew quite a few chances when we had overlaps down the right. We also missed Tommy attacking on the right. If Farrell doesnt let the ball flow to Sam and Goulding as O'Loughlin does then our right hand side will suffer. Charnley may have still got a hat trick but that says more about how poor Widnes are and the sheer amount of chances we had than anything great about our attack imo.

I think it just goes to show how important O'Loughlin is at 13 for us. Do we have anyone in the Academy remotely as good?

Mellor will be at widnes next season

It's a bit much to be expecting someone from the academy to be even remotely as good as O'Loughlin is at 13.

A ball playing 13 might become a thing of the past depending on how teams decide to play so there's no guarantee that a future 13 will have to compare to O'Loughlin.

There's time for Farrell to develop into a very good 13, Rhodri Lloyd could be used in that role in future although if we wanted a future ball playing loose forward then Connor Farrell is a very good ball player.

I'm pretty sure O'Loughlin used to be used fairly equally at stand off and at loose forward in the academy; he was certainly good enough at stand off as a junior and that's where his ball playing ability came from.