Yeah I'm not necessarily saying he was solely to blame for the game, it's rare that one player is. I bet he would have done better, or at least bounced back, if he had more games under his belt beforehand though. When you look back at that season, we won 18 games by 20+ points and yet we pretty much never played anything except our strongest available 17. Every week that would have been the least risky option to win the game, right up until your best player gets injured and you're asking a youngster to deal with getting peppered by Kevin Sinfield in a play off. I know from near enough the horse's mouth that the club were very poor with how they dealt with Murphy after that as well, but hopefully the approach has changed.

Hopefully it won't happen, but I'd hate to be getting to a game later in the season and COVID/injuries strike and we're left wishing Smith/Kilner/Halsall had been ready to step up. There is also the question of how we expect Smith to start every week next year if we only ever give him the odd 15 minutes when the game is over as a contest. We are likely to lose some or all of French/Hastings/Leuluai, so we need to see whether he is going to be ready whilst there is still time to sign someone for next year if he isn't. The Championship is weak right now, and York aren't even one of the top 3 sides in it IMO. If we can't rotate against them and still get a win then we're in big trouble.

Don't forget the possibility that one of them actually takes their chance and improves the first team. Sam Tomkins and Liam Farrell are examples of players who we sat on for too long before giving them a crack IMO, sat behind Tim Smith, Phil Bailey and Mark Flanagan because we were fielding what we believed to be our strongest team every week.

Bloody hell there’s a character I’ve not seen in years! Dirty Latics mon

My thoughts were that we’d really get to see if they have the desire to try and earn a place in the first choice team on a regular basis. A way of trying to drive competition but let them know they’d have to play out of their skin to displace Byrne, Bullock or any of the other forwards and you may well get a bit more out of those two in this game than you would out of a first choice forward who thinks his place is safe. I want the strongest spine and a real core of the players who have started these first two games but I just think there’s lots to gain going forward from trying to drive competition in the prop position. There’s a lot of them but none are at the very top of the tree when it comes to superleague props, so I’d like to just see us try and force everything we can out of them. If we lose against York with that side I named, it won’t be because we picked Clubb and Clark IMO.

Clarke especially deserves a shot imo. The Salford game was only a friendly, but he showed up well. Outside of that Bullock and Singleton have been average/good since the start of the season. For me, you need to let players who probably aren't playing as well as they could know there's other options.

Like you said, front row is our weakest spot, but we're stacked for options. Unless a top prop drops in our lap we need to make the most out of our current pool.

Who knows, we might see a 2nd season bounce from Clarke? I'm not confident, but how else do you find out?

Yep, I think a fringe player getting a rare opportunity is a lot less likely to be complacent against York than a regular starter too. Even if Clark is going to be poor, I'd rather find out now in a game we can carry him in and still win comfortably.

My worry is that, if we don't change the team for anything other than injuries, the starting players could get too comfortable.

A raft of changes would be wrong, but swapping out a couple of lads for experience in Clubb & a 27/28 year guy like Clarke isn't taking the pi$$.

Yeah. I know Kilner isn't in the 21 man squad but he showed up well in that Saints game then never got another crack so far. I didn't realise until recently that he is the same age as Byrne, Partington and Havard.

idve given him a shot before now, Oie is 2 years older than Havard and Byrne is in between add smithies to that and the crazy young for a pack

I have never seen a game where Kilner did not go forward after contact. He seems lively in defence as well. I would like to see him in a team that was not going backward most of the time. I understand that wholesale changes can be a problem but we should be able to put out a decent team for this no matter what.

For whatever reason we now seem to start most games slowly and having Clubb and Clark on the bench would just extend that. Neither of them add anything to the squad and it was only a few weeks ago we were looking to offload Clarke.

I’d rather win tonight with last week’s 17 and play C&C against Leeds who I think could be quite vulnerable after playing Saints over the weekend.

Most fans seem to think tonight is a gimme I’m definitely not in that camp. We’ve played probably the 2 worst teams in SL and have put together 2 pretty dire first 40 minutes and got away with it. I don’t want to risk a repeat and be playing a team who I’m assuming are treating this game as their final.

I maybe overreacting but I’d rather do that then end up with egg on our face. I suppose my problem is that I think any team coached by Lam is suspect to having a a very bad game and I want some success this season in the CC

I agree with that although I would add that I think Singleton and Bullock have been performing well below expectation levels and therefore they need a timely nudge.

I’d give Clark a go instead of Bullock.

Clark played well in the Salford friendly and Bullock has been poor IMO.

Reward Byrne with a starting spot.