Please not sick note Lomax. We’re moving away from the old bring in the new. I don’t give a toss what happens in these games, blood someone new

I'm not sure Lomax is the way to go either. Wane may have gone off him anyway due to his World Cup decision. The problem is England badly lack depth in the playmaking positions - both at halfback and fullback.

Harry Smith will probably play - alongside him I don't see many other options outside Lewis Dodd. Lewis and Pryce [imay[/i be options in the future but not now. Williams was poor in 2022 but had a great World Cup - Wane may feel he can get a similar improvement from Dodd.

I would go Lewis personally, a halfback combo of Smith and Dodd just seems too similar to work and lacking a creative edge.

Of course, Williams would be my first choice to partner Smith by a landslide but the RFL appear to be an organisation of masochist's so that is no longer possible until the 3rd test when the series could be mathematically over anyway. I read Stu's original post hours ago and i am still shocked!

Yeah, Williams and Smith would be the ideal pairing - one an instinctive "eyes up" off the cuff player and one more controlling with a good kicking game.

Not sure who I would bring in to replace Williams for the first two. Welsby would be ideal but then who plays at FB?

Lomax has been playing busted again for weeks with a whole host of knocks and given his age and the fact that Wane is trying to build a team long-term then he's not the answer.

A strong argument could be made for a trio of Tomkins, Welsby, and Smith as the 3. Come to think of it, that's very strong. Assuming Tomkins is still available for International selection? A few heads will fall off from the "Wane picks all his mates" brigade, but he has proven as recently as last weekend that he is still more than capable of coming up with big plays.

Tomkins is retiring after Saturday.

Looking at the 40 man training squad the options for 1, 6 & 7 are:

Jordan Abdull
Lewis Dodd
Mikey Lewis
Harry Smith
Jonny Lomax
Jack Welsby
George Williams

As Williams is suspended and Abdull hasn’t really played there’s not a lot of options.

I think we should be looking to the future so should rule Lomax out. I don’t think Smith and Dodd are a good combo. I’d probably go for either Mikey Lewis or Welsby to 6 and Ash Handley to 1.

I'm guessing the "big news" is this Havard is back.

You do wonder if he could be persuaded, one last outing and favour for his good mate Wane, although i do feel it would be unfair to ask.

As you say, Welsby to 6 would be an ideal scenario but if not Tomkins or Welsby i have no idea who would play fullback to a high enough standard.

I was saying to a mate yesterday how frustrating the whole Williams situation is, we have one chance a year (sometimes not even that!) to play some good quality international games against worthy opposition and with our best side out there. It is all well and good nilling France mid season with half of what would be a realistic test team for England, and hopefully in a few years France can start to put up some stronger opposition but that is currently not the case.

This Tonga series is exactly the sort of game we need to be going full throttle into and having a player that is currently so pivital to our international team serving a ban for 2/3rds of the test is really going to put a strain on our practice for the World Cup.

All the other Pacific based teams will be competing in the Pacific Championships. Say that these matches are successful and the Pacific teams make it a yearly competition, we could very easily find ourselves in the scenario of having nobody of note to play going forward as all the Pacific teams (including Tonga) don't see a reason to travel all the way to England when they can play in a top level competition on their own doorstep.

There is a genuine chance that this series could be the only one we get of substance before the next World Cup, and having our captain and one of our key (and most experienced) players guarenteed to miss the majority because he is serving a ban that has now been doubled is a travesty, not to mention one of our own creating which just adds to the frustration.

I'd be absolutely staggered if Havard plays after being out for so long. He won't be match fit and any sort of re-occurrence means you are down a sub in a Final. It would be madness to take the risk and a Final being his first game back.

Also with all due respect to him, him playing or not won't be the difference between you losing or winning the game like say French.

We brought Walmsley back for the play offs and to be honest he looked way short of full fitness and was ineffective really.

Absolutely spot on. Wane must be absolutely livid. I'm staggered by the ban to be honest even before they increased it.

Conflicted on whether i would play him though if that was the case.

On one hand it would be a massive boost and last time he came back from injury he had a stormer of a first game back, on the other it would be a massive gamble in a final that i am not sure we need to take.

If this was the announcement though, that would mean he would definitely be playing.

Like Stu said, I'm not sure if him coming back constitutes as a game changer, but it's a nice to have.

I'd play him for two reasons;

1. The last time we played him after a layoff (CC Vs Wire) he put in his best ever performance in a Wigan shirt. Was it Wilkin who described it as the best performance by a Wigan prop in over a decade?

2. Even if he does 20 mins, that's comparable to what we'd expect from Hill, who will probably be play instead. Nothing against Hill, but he made a couple of mistakes Vs KR (I'm really not knocking him btw). You'd expect the output from Havard over 20 mins, to be greater than 20 from Hill.

If we we're replacing say Dupree, or Mago for Havard I'd be saying no. We aren't however, we're replacing a young guy who won't play big mins anyway..

Havard named in the 21 man squad.

rlhttps://wiganwarriors.com/blog/rl

Havard in the squad.