Quote NickyKiss="NickyKiss"He was frozen out at Cas because he was leaving and I guess Leigh like his other clubs felt he was suited to a bench spot. He’ll have a fair chance here of making the 17 depending on what he puts in to pre season. He is a strong runner of a ball and like Bullock, it will depend on how much they can improve the other aspects of their game as to how much they play.
I look at our prop options and we need more balance than we had in the play offs. We didn’t have one prop who gave you confidence they would make the ground the team needed. We had Flower who was not match fit, Clubb who’d got in to his mode of just concentrating on trying to hurt people, Partington who can defend and drag people in to a battle but doesn’t make ground and Byrne who struggled with the step up in intensity when the play offs came (which is totally understandable). We’re absolutely desperate for George Burgess to be that metre eating forward we need and if he can be that then the balance is better straight away. We can use Bullock from the bench who’ll ensure we keep getting forward when George goes off and guys like Flower and Partington can work at setting a tempo for the side defensively, with aggressive line speed. If George Burgess doesn’t work out then we’ll struggle.'"
Balance? Each one of the qualities mentioned should be part of every props game; they should just inhabit one or the other. 'Dragging people into the battle' and 'Hurting people' aren't qualities of a prop; I've never seen a stat for either to be honest.
This is becoming a problem, fans or the club happy with substandard performances and qualities in a player. Truth is; not one of our props were anything close to good enough; proof is in their stats and the overall results when we faced Saints and Salford in the crunch games.
Props; run hard with aggression, make the hard yards, know when it's safe to offload and when it's not. If part of the game plan, make yards after contact and find their front as quickly as possible. In defence; they must tackle hard but fair with line speed in the middle of the pitch and always endeavour to be the first in the tackle, work their socks off as they play limited minutes to other positions.
On a basic level that's about it. If they get that right they'll put us on the front foot; wear down the opposition and be fan favourites. Sometimes it's back to basics and keeping things simple in approach.
If a prop isn't inhabiting said characteristics then a) they're not up to scratch, b) must improve in the areas in order to fulfil their duties as a prop.
