A fit and firing George Burgess is a game changer.

I haven't given up on him yet. Reports all suggest he is just as frustrated as we are. Giving him time to rest and sort his hip with the medical staff is the right thing to do.

Get it right and he is the best prop at the club. It is worth persisting with him.

One of the best in the world at his best and I really hope you’re right but I see no signs that you could be. How much rest does he need? He’s had the last two seasons off pretty much and he’s had huge spells of rest this season with covid. He was given another spell of around 6 weeks to get it right after lockdown and then looked worse than ever with the pain once he came back. The talk of him needing a hip replacement looks to ring true the more you see him and if that’s correct, he’s finished as a top level rugby league player. The sad part for us is we’ll be paying for a top player for two more seasons yet.

Battye has been superb for Wakefield since he came across. Been a big part of Wakefield’s mini revival.

He isn’t the type of prop we need though. We need a meter eater to put us on the front foot.

That was what Burgess was recruited for but it’s not looking likely to materialise.

Smithy on the other board started a rumour about Charnley coming back .... cant see anything in that one!!

Wigan posted a picture on their Facebook page of Josh celebrating a try. People immediately put 2 and 2 together... what they didn’t realise is it was a picture of Josh celebrating a try against Saints and if you looked at the other Facebook posts the club did, they were all pictures of Wigan v Saints games. There were pictures of Sam, Lockers, Farrell, Lockers... people are stupid.

Can we not have 2001 Renouf instead? Might as well go all out and ignore the laws of time and space if we're already ignoring the salary cap and contracts. Presume he will just be bringing the kicking tee on whilst Johnstone starts and George Burgess donates his salary back to the club right?

Total rl this morning saying that clark has been told he can leave.

It was me that told him.

We have plenty props at the club, we will be short on centres and wingers at the start of next season. We also seem to have a surplus of half backs for 2021 but maybe just two for 2022 if Tommy and Jacko leave.
The most important if we want to win trophies is a goal kicker who can land them in pressure games. Either get a kicking coach in for Zac to take him from the reserve kicker role to a top class kicker. Or, my preference. keep Hankinson to play centre or wing and get a kicking coach to improve them both. Only seen Hanks kicking in one pressure game and that was Leeds last year when he kicked five from five which one of the main reasons we won at their place. Zac wasn't good in the LLS game at Saints when the only thing keeping them in the game was our poor goal kicking. As for last Friday, least said! Either a kicking coach or bring in a top class goal kicker, who would cost a fortune. It would probably be a lot less to keep Hanks and the cost of a Kicking coach, that's if he needs one.

I think we've forgotten the importance of a top class goal kicker as we've had them for over thirty years with Richards/Farrell/Botica/Lydon. A lack of one can cost games and prevent you getting to finals. Going back decades, Fred Griffiths left, we then struggled with Eric Ashton kicking, we brought in Gilfedder then when he departed struggled again and in desperation sold one of best players Chris Hesketh to Salford and signed Colin Tyrer who was a top class goalkicker. The problems of not having a top class goal kicker we well understood back then. Especially when our then main rivals Wakefield and Saints had Neil Fox and Len Kileen who could both kick goals from anywhere and did, especially at Wembley.

Mole has come out and said G Burgess is on the brink of medical retirement. You’d imagine a good chunk of cap space would be free’d up but it’ll come at a hefty cost to the club.

If we had kicked every single goal (which no one does), we would won a grand total of 1 more game (Friday) and drawn 1 (London away last year) in the last three seasons. That includes Friday's which, as we know, were a touchline conversion and a long range wide penalty. Neither of those are sitters for any kicker I've seen.

Totally disagree that the most important thing for us to sort is a kicker if we want to win trophies, far more interested in fielding the players who have the best chance of getting tries for us and preventing them for the opposition. That's where games are won and lost. As long as we have a reasonably competent kicker (which we do), we're fine. Agree about kicking coaching though if it's not happening already. Even if we had Richards or Andy Farrell we should still be doing that.

Did you really figure that out?

Excellent work if so.

Goal kicking seems to weirdly elevate players in fans/media e.g. Botica, Farrell, Richards, Sinfield .

It's obviously important and like you say, there's no reason not to coach it, I definitely think we could do better, but I really wouldn't be surprised if your win loss stats are true.