Agree 100%, Mago and Byrne did about 10 minutes each at Wembley too. Better to have versatility.

Mago still doesn’t seemed to be trusted in really tight games.

I've always said I would not be surprised to see Mago miss out when the crunch games come at the end of the season, even though he's an ever present. There is no point having 4 forwards on the bench when you have 3 lads in the middle capable of playing the 80 minutes. It just makes no sense to me and you may as well cover your bases elsewhere. I always think back to that Leeds play off defeat in 2022 and we suffered from having 4 forwards on the bench that night. Sometimes it makes sense but not currently with the make up of the starting pack as it is.

Fully agree with having a utility back on the bench, in view of our starting props doing big minutes.

Hopefully there'll be no need for any of the pack to do 80 mins on Saturday though it probably wouldn't do Walters any harm to get extra mins under his belt

Injuries to French and Field have ensured the club have had to find suitable players to stand in for them.
Looks like Farrimond and Eckersley are those players.
Eckersley was the difference between us and Saints and looks like he'll keep the fb slot until Field returns.
When Jai does return perhaps he'll go to 6 with Farrimond being stood down. He's only 18 and perhaps by then will have done enough first team games and will need a rest.
With most people in the sport thinking French and Field are our two best players the club have done remarkably well with Farrimond and Eckersley doing so well when asked.

Injuries to French and Field have ensured the club have had to find suitable players to stand in for them.
Looks like Farrimond and Eckersley are those players.
Eckersley was the difference between us and Saints and looks like he'll keep the fb slot until Field returns.
When Jai does return perhaps he'll go to 6 with Farrimond being stood down. He's only 18 and perhaps by then will have done enough first team games and will need a rest.
With most people in the sport thinking French and Field are our two best players the club have done remarkably well with Farrimond and Eckersley doing so well when asked.

Field, Farrimond, Smith

Is a much better balance than

Eckersley, Field, Smith

Field isn't good enough at 6, it really doesn't suit him.

Agree 100%, he’s great defensively at FB but was a speed bump against Catalan at magic last year.

If Farrimond need taking out the fire I’d consider

1 Field
3 Eckerlsey
6 Keighran
7 Smith

Keighran played loads of 6 last year

Was it last year at Magic where Field played 6 ?
Had an absolute mare but to be fair I don't think anyone covered themselves in glory that day.
FB all day long when he's back

It was and he was poor but like you say, so was everybody else and it was a really poor run of form for the side around that time. I do think it will put paid to any chance of him playing there, even in the short term but it's worth considering, especially if Eckersley continues to play as he did last Friday!

Whilst I wouldn't necessarily advocate Field at 6 he was absolutely awesome there for a couple games including Leigh away last year. The problem is his defence in the line. He's probably the best 1 on 1 defender in the league from fullback but can be suspect defending closer in.

I think Jai is judged pretty harshly off the back of that game at Magic, he had 1 game against Leigh at 6 and ripped them to pieces, then had a 2 month injury layoff and came straight back in against a very good side on a hot day when that entire right edge struggled. I do think he's better suited at full back in defence and attack, but it would be harsh to totally write him off based on that game.

After the weekend's games I'm just bouncing this to get your take Stu. Still feel the same? By my reckoning all of those were back except Makinson and Hurrell (who won't be coming back anyway).

Not sure what you are trying to achieve with this post? I could understand had this been my last post and I’d not posted since but it’s clear that I’ve been saying for weeks that we are done this season. It’s a poor decision giving Wellens another year and there’s no points in our attack.

We’ve fallen off a cliff and are a team with no confidence. I can’t wait for the season to end.

However whilst you have conveniently found a post where the said players are back you are missing the point still that as bad as we were yesterday we had no Percival, Clark, Dodd, Sironen, Makinson and Bell. That’s still 6 first 17 players and not including half a game from Welsby coming back from an injury who hasn’t played for 6 weeks.

It’s a strange post you make considering my recent comments. If I was still suggesting we have a chance of winning the comp then fine but it’s literally like you haven’t read any of my posts in the past few weeks.

Wasn't meant to be a dig Stu. I was genuinely asking if your opinion has changed. I have seen your posts but you've still repeatedly mentioned having players back for the business end of the season. In fact you're still mentioning it in this reply. It's not that long since you posted your "open goal" comment too regarding our discussion on our respective attacks. How come that was ok if this isn't?

As I said , I didn't mean anything by this post but given your answer I'm now tempted to say don't dish it out if you can't take it.

Well you’ve seen my posts so you know my opinion so you’ve answered your own question. I’ve wrote the season off. I’ve mentioned the players we had missing because you made our we are now at full strength when we are anything but.

I’m listing players missing as mitigation.

I also wonder if you would’ve still made this post had HKR beaten you on Friday.

It’s funny but I very nearly logged on last night to remark that we’ve fallen so far that Wigan fans can’t even be d to log on and take the p*** out of us anymore. That’s what it’s come to.

I just think it’s strange to bring an old post out of hibernation when if you’ve read my posts properly you know my viewpoint. And then to compound that by making out we are now at full strength is even more strange.

Mate you're still doing it. You're repeatedly going on about players missing. Even now. So "writing off the season" as you put it is still being mitigated which makes my question fair and relevant.

The discussion we have repeatedly had (not just with you but with The Reaper, YG and also some Wigan fans including NK who's posts I generally agree with) is that you'll come good once players return. I said you wouldn't because your attack hasn't been good enough for a couple of seasons.

Stu, I'm not interested in another argument with you. Clearly that's where this is leading. I asked you a fair question based on something you've repeatedly posted during this entire season. Now you don't want me to discuss it because this was from a few weeks ago. Sorry. If you'd just like to set the time limits for questioning something you said I'll make sure I adhere to your rules.

So you don’t want to start an argument but you’ve decided to bring an old post up from a couple of months ago to ask a question that you already know the answer to?

Not sure how my posts of late and “my falling off a cliff” comment isn’t conclusive proof that my opinion has changed.

And once again in the main I’ve listed players missing because you seemed to think that we are at full strength now because the players listed in my original post were now back.

In the interests of not boring everyone else and entering into another argument that’s my last comment on it

Great. I'll make my last comment too then. No, I didn't know the answer to it as you have repeatedly (and still are) using missing players as mitigation. You may well have posted about falling off a cliff but so were many Wigan fans a few weeks ago. It didn't, and doesn't, mean that we think we have no chance once French and others were back. My question was "do you still think that once players are back you'll be ok?" (sic) That's a fair and reasonable question.

You really are hard work. You could have just answered "Yes, I still think we'll be ok once we get more players back as we're still nowhere near full strength" or "no, I've changed my mind as I've intimidated over recent posts. Returning players aren't relevant anymore".
Instead you choose to make a big deal of it. Wtf is your problem? You seem to want to pick and choose what you're prepared to discuss. You're worse than Donald fecking Trump.

I've told myself many times not to engage with you. I think it's about time I listened.

Fwiw, whilst I've lost hope of us getting to the GF or anything like that, I still have a lingering sense of optimism that we'll end the season by regaining a bit of self respect if we can get our players back (I'm a masochist). Its a big if as we have been losing them faster than we've been getting them back all season so it may never happen, but I still fancy us to be a much bigger challenge when we get the guys back. Dodd will make us marginally better in attack (how we've been since he's been missing dispelled any notion he was the problem. We've actually been far worse without him) but it's not our attack I have faith in, it'll be the defence which is probably the most important thing in the play offs. I think it's looked a lot better over the last few games (Hull KR aside who seem to just be able to cut us open regardless) and when you can take out some of the lightweight edges such as robertson, bennison and one of blake/ritson and replace them with welsby, percival and makinson. When we can take out whitley and have Sironen there instead, have Bell coming off the bench, and Clark back as starting hooker then I think our defence should show far more steel than it has been doing.

You seem to be acting here as though Stu has been proven wrong but he hasn't really, our injury situation has never gotten better. It's lasted too long for us to really amount to any serious challenge for the title at this point, but to act like it's not been a huge factor in us falling off a cliff this season is a strange one. You say our attack hasnt been good enough for the last few years, but it's been enough to get the job done far more often than not (before the 2nd half of this season i mean)

To be honest I think Saints biggest problems are Walmsley and Paasi, to say they have been underwhelming since their return from injury is an understatement. They made, collectively, less than 70m at Warrington yesterday and Wire had their best two props sat in the stand. If you cannot get any go forward you have no field position which makes it very difficult to score tries unless, of course, you have French, Field and Wardle in your team. One thing is for sure no team can keep defending its way to wins if it is not scoring tries and Saints return of for in four isn’t going to win any game. That is nearly as bad as our football team Stu, two in three!

It's looking a longer and longer shot but I still won't rule them out totally with a full team (as full as it can be now) because I've seen teams like Leeds in the past find a way to win tight play off games and they've had seasons where they've been in a far bigger mess than Saints have been in this year (2017 jumps out, with them turning a 60 point hiding at the Jungle in to a GF win against the same opposition).

It's unlikely but not impossible. I think they'll finish 6th now and that'll likely mean then needing to go away to Wire and then Wigan or HKR to make the final. You can't see it but put it this way, I think the top 2 or 3 clubs would rather face a Leeds, Salford etc than they would an experienced Saints team.

I wasn't insinuating that Stu has been proven wrong. I was just asking if his opinion had stayed the same (I'm still not sure either way). It won't be proved right or wrong until the end of the season. The reason I asked is that after seeing your game yesterday I thought the players he'd mentioned previously as potential saving graces were actually among the worst performers. Walmsley and Paasi in particular. My own opinion hasn't changed but as I said above we'll only know if I was right come the end of the season.

Do you think Wellens will trust Dodd again? He seems to have turned his back on him a little.

And most of Walmsleys metres were him chasing his own knock ons.

Giving him and Lomax 3 year deals have been horrendous business decisions. One of our biggest mistakes is rewarding loyalty wrongly instead of being ruthless when a players body has packed up and letting them down each week.

Not sure if Walmsley has come back too soon again and may look different after an off season but he’s a shadow of what he was. Lomax was finished last season

The problem was that he didn’t for the Ashton try, a big sin in rugby league in my book. You drop the ball you get on it and nullify any possible attack.