Shaun told the weekly press conference,

"Finch is struggling so Sam Powell will get a chance, Daz is also struggling, we will monitor him but he is very doubtful. Lockers hamstring also hasn't cleared up and if he's not right I'm not prepared to risk him as it could mean 5 or 6 weeks out. Ben also has an injury and we will have to see how he goes in the next day or so."

So Flower is touch and go

Tried that for a short while in the Cas game, didn't really work, IMO.

Surely if Goulding isn't fit to play it makes sense to play a centre (i.e. not Hughes) at centre and possibly call up someone who has performed very well for the under 20's in that position. In other words, Gelling!

The other option would obviously be to play Thornley at right centre but I get the impression that he's much more comfortable playing on the left.

It's not like Hughes won't get the chance to be rewarded for his good performance for the under 20's because there's no point taking a risk on Flower so Hughes can just replace him, with Farrell or Tuson moving to loose forward.

He didn't get to do his usual minutes if I'm not mistaken because he went off injured but he looked better than Tuson in attack (in other words he actually did something).

Hughes has already been used as replacement in the centres on several (in fact 7 - 6 on the left, 1 on the right) occasions this season, and has now built up good SL experience. He also played at centre in the warm up games, so Wane obviously considers him to be of the appropriate standard and has done since January.

Thornley has only had a few games back in RL, and showed on Friday that he is still rusty (although it was nice to see him improve as the game went on, and he didnt repeat his errors. something gelling has been guilty of.) I would like to see him get more game time on the wing, rather than promote back to centre too early.

I actually thought it went ok tbh. He ran hard and punched some holes in them and defended, as ever, with good aggression. We started the game really dominant and were 16-0 in his first spell so I thought the results looked pretty good.

There is certainly an argument there for us picking him at 13 in certain games when Lockers is out. Against smaller packs Faz is your man as he'll cause them all sorts of problems in defence but against big, aggressive packs Flower may prove a shrewd option allowing us to get an extra prop in.

I really doubt Hughes' ability to put his winger in space so a no go at centre for me, I would play him off the bench at second row though. Gelling looked a real handful at centre for the academy last week, this looks like a great opportunity to show us what he can do in the first team in his natural position. If Finch is out I would have been more tempted to run with Russell at 1 and Sam at 6 Russell has impressed at full back at super league level already and Sam tore it up in the halves when he first broke into the first team. We have no idea how Powell will get on

Yeah, I know a few teams use #13 as an extra prop, I'm just not keen on the tactic myself. OK, Tuson isn't as creative as Lockers, but he's still more so than Flower.

It all depends what you need against certain sides doesn't it. In the main we're good enough and big enough to not have to bother with that option of playing an extra prop at 13 but it could come in handy at points.

I agree on Tuson by the way. I'm a fan of his and believe the only thing that holds him back is a lack of minutes. He's a very handy squad player that would start at a lot of other clubs.

i thought flower played lf before he came to us?

He did on quite a few occasions. Most of the games he started he played at loose but he was used at prop, second row and loose for Crusaders and was comfortable in all three positions.

If we wrap up tom briscoe and manu were home and dry regardless of the starting 13!

I wish I had your confidence. We are missing a huge amount of experience for this game with yet another HB pairing. Given that the league is irrelevant to most (but not me) I shouldn't be bothered. My main hope is that Hull don't turn up with their tactic of trying to injure Sam like last year.

Thankfully Joel Tomkins has moved to Rugby Union so he cant run at players with his elbow in their throats