I like partingtons aggression but he let himself down last night, he kept going in for the big hit and missing, ie the 9 missed tackles. Can’t do that against a better team.

I like Partington’s aggression but I am asking myself what does he and Smithies actually bring to the table other than an over egged ego and the need to look like the hardest mon on the pitch? Everyone loves the big hit but he’s constantly looking for it and more often than not making himself look the chum. If he concentrated on taking that misplaced aggression out in his offense and when he takes a ball in he’d be a far better player IMO. As for Smithies I just don’t know what he does to warrant a place in the side at the moment. He has bags and bags of potential but he seems content on trying to rough players up. Much like Partington; if he channelled that properly he’d be a far better player but that tutelage comes down ultimately to the coach. Lam seems happy for these two to carry on so I don’t expect it to change anytime soon.

The OP is correct on metres from the props but they have all been slated for how poor they were so I don’t understand the Clubb link. I’d rather Bullock/Singo in the squad than Clubb in any case.

The difference is, that was a poor performance by those players whereas stats like that are the norm for Clubb.

Is that the first time a fit Clubb hasn’t been selected by Lam? The only way to get more out of him is to make him earn a shirt instead of getting selected based on ten minutes worth of nothing. I’ve stuck up for Clubb at times but I’ve never seen a prop who looks as happy to leave the tough work to others if he can get away with it.

Yeah I think so. Flower, Bullock, Clark and G.Burgess went through periods of being available and not selected but I don't think Clubb has till now.

Didn't see the Salford friendly but plenty on here seemed to think Clark was one of our better props, no sign of him yesterday.
I know he's inconsistent but he can bring some oomph to the pack if he's on form.
You'd hope he'd be busting a gut in training as his future seems to be on the line.

Farrell was fantastic last night, typical Farrell
30mins or so in I wouldn't have been surprised if he had more carries and metres than the rest of the pack together.
And ethan havards 46 tackles and 130ish metres from 16 carries was very good (I agree with jonh that we need to find out if he's ever going to be an enforcer, but even if not and he isn't nesh than progression of his stats like that will.do for me).
Tony clubb would have to play 6 games to get those stats !!!!

As for Partington
Agree that his aggression sometimes created problems for ourselves, but it was at a time when we were being bossed in the forwards he stepped up and had a real go, e needed someone to try and lifts us, that'll do for me.

Not sure how much you can really read into the stats. It's the first game of the season. Maybe it's worth waiting for another game or 3 before deciding our entire pack is awful and all needs replacing. After all, we finished top and reached the Grand Final last season. They can't be that bad.

As someone who looks at the stats after every game you can only really get a picture of where someone's performances are at after they've played a few games. There are always anomalies. Every team has games where several of their forwards record a low amount of metres made, or have an exceptionally high number of missed tackles.

Powell flew under the radar, 65 tackles.

Good point about stats, some people seem to live by them but they certainly don’t tell you everything.

I think this could be a result where we look back and realise it was a better win than we realised, let’s see how Leigh go from here, would you be surprised if they turned over some of the top teams this season? I wouldn’t and I thought they were outstanding in that first half.

I was content with the points all things considered but lots of room for improvement so let’s hope we learn from it.

The other issue is that we need our back three to make good metres and put us on the front foot.

I do not think that all of our pack needs replacing, most of them are capable of doing exactly what is required of them. But we got to the Grand Final last year despite the glaring weaknesses not because of them. We covered over our lack of forward meter makers through dogged determination and a back line that could get us out of trouble. The same issues are still there that we tried to address by buying Burgess. Individually our forwards are fine but together they do not have the makings of winners. It is a bit like trying to paint but only having shades of red available.