Penrith often has Yeo playing at first receiver, then on to Cleary to distribute. This allows Jerome Luai to run wider with more space. Bevan is more than capable of playing a Luai type role. If Smithies pay the Yeo role, and Smith plays the Cleary role, we should be able to have Bevan running wider with the option of the long or short pass to wing or centre. Cleary has the option of using Luia, Edwards, or a second rower. If we attack to our left, we could run a similar play with Smith having the option of passing to Bevan, Farrell or Field. Speed to burn out wide and play of indecision in the defence’s minds.

I get what you are saying, but let’s not simplify the issue. Comparing Smith, French and Smithies to Clearly, Luai and Yeo and their respective abilities is a bit of a stretch.

But the opposition isn't NRL standard either so they don't need to be.

It works as a principle.

I did think that when I was proposing it.

I personally do not see Smithies or indeed anyone currently at the club who could fill the Yeo role.

Possibly Shorrrocks but still not convinced he has the all round game to be a regular starting 13 for a club hoping to be in contention for trophies year in year out.

I think O’Neil could be. He’s played plenty of #13. I get what he’s saying here and have thought the key to the French/Field conundrum could be a ball playing #13

Yeo, IMO, is the best 13 in world rugby right now, so complaining that Wigan haven't got anyone quite as good is asking for rather a lot...

It puzzles me why all the blame for our supposedly poor attack gets laid on French despite his attacking returns being very impressive since moving to stand off. I know it's not ideal, and I know it's not his natural position and a role like stand off takes time to learn but I also don't think he's doing a terrible job.

15 direct try involvements (mostly assists) since moving to 6 is pretty impressive and comparable with the best halves in the competition. I can see why Matt Peet doesn't want to move French onto the wing because we will lose that creativity by having him in a non creative position and his first 6 games he played on the wing this year hardly saw him scoring for fun. We need that creativity from a half and we didn't get it from Cust early in the year, that's why French to 1 and Field to 6 was the call from a significant number of fans.

Ultimately French's try involvements are impressive. Jai Field's try involvements have been slightly better since French moved to 6 too. It's pretty clear though that Smith's form has dipped though and that's obviously a concern. I'm not sure you can put that all down to French though. Good halves work with makeshift halfback partners at times during their careers and the best ones still produce the goods. They can still work their edge and create tries even if they don't get much input from their halfback partner. Even if French was the worst 6 imaginable we still have Field at fullback and some excellent players on our left edge. French has created plenty of tries for Miski without any involvement from Smith. I don't recall Smith making many opportunities for Marshall in the same way.

I'm not going in the other direction and arguing that Smith is somehow a problem. I don't think it's ever been that simple. Lets be realistic here. Our attack might not be too fluid but it wasn't at the start of the season when we had Cust and Smith in the halves. We were inconsistent then. We're inconsistent now. We had a tendency to overplay then. We have a tendency to overplay now.

We actually average more points per Super League game with French at stand off than we did before he moved there. Before the Hull FC game we'd scored over 20 points in 6 consecutive Super League game. Prior to that we'd only scored over 20 points in 2 consecutive games.

We've never had a consistently good attacking game this year. We've had moments. We've had games where things have clicked but at no point has it been consistently good. It's a season-long issue and I don't think you can really point the finger at individuals or even just the halves here.

For all the complaining about our attack we are still the second highest points scorers in the league and but probably be pushing top with a better goal kicker.

We've been missing our best three props most of the season through injury/suspension, that's been and is our biggest issue

Missing front rowers isn't going to help but it had nothing to do with the performance against Hull. We had more than enough field position and attacking opportunity - it was simply a lack of execution, cohesion and skill.

..and conditions. Both teams were struggling to keep hold of the ball. Neither team kicked their goals (bar the penalty in front of the sticks).

Makes Smith's 45 yard drop goal even more remarkable.

We’ve scored the most tries in SL and lead the league in clean breaks.

French at 6 won’t stop us winning the big games, it’ll be defence particularly in the middle stopping offloads and quick PTBs against the better packs.


Also we get criticised for lack of offloads (again we lead super league) also we give away too many penalties (we’ve conceded the fewest in SL)

We have literally done the second least offloads in the league, not sure where you’ve seen that we lead.

We’ve also done the second most defence (after Wakey), combining that with most tries scored paints a very odd picture

French at 6 is looking a lot better now