Escare
Davies Farrell Gilly Burgess
Williams Tomkins
Flower Tommy Nararette
TT Joel
Lockers
-----------------
Powell Bateman Clubb Sutton


Creative team!

Always wanted to see Faz tried at centre, good size for the position, good hands and seems faster than the likes of Bateman.
Escare to play 80 at fb, Sam to play 80 at SH. Only change positionally is Powell coming in at 9 for Tommy. Keeps consistency in key positions.
Really like to see TT as a SR. Get him running further out wide at smaller men. He's a big athletic lad, I believe this could be his position.

Bateman for Lockers. But, when Lockers returns keep Bateman on. Lockers to come on for another player/forward. Lockers can come on for a prop etc. Between Lockers and Bateman we can cover pretty much everywhere on the pitch bar wing/FB.

Time Joe Burgess had a good run in the team. Time to get fit and back to his best.

Interesting selections, but it's made me realise more than ever that it's time this club acquired a pair of decent centres from somewhere.

I admit I purposely tried to be creative. But I'd honestly like to see Faz given a run a centre and TT in the SR.

Pitch inspection at 5pm

Do you think Tautai is quick enough to defend at second row, and fit enough to stay on for the amount of time they play? I don't, and would look at dropping him if Navarette is doing as well as Wane indicates.

Yes I do. He's an athletic forward.

He’s either not fit enough or probably more accurate, not pushing himself enough to even hold a spot spelling in the front row at the minute so there’s no way he can be trusted to go in at second row.

There’s a decent enough front rower in there somewhere with Tautai but he’s conned us in his time at the club. He played his socks off in the 2nd half of 2016 to get himself in a spot for a new deal and ever since that was signed in the early stages of last year, he’s dropped off a cliff and gone back to his form of year one at the club.

It’s become boring waiting for him to put a shift in again.

Faz in centre is something i have said before. But i think left centre is the only place he could play, right centre be too much of a change for him.

TT started off life as a winger, then centre, then into the pack. With his size and movement he'd add size and power to our edge. Maybe this transition would take a few games (as expected) but for me it's an experiment worth having. Get him running at smaller men further out wide and see his metres improve.

He’d be embarrassed defensively imo because half the time he looks heavy legged and disoriented when trying to get back in to the line. He frustrates the life out of me because he’s shown us how good he can be but ever since that new deal was in his pocket he’s hardly put a good game together. The first place he’d be moving to for me would be the reserve side to try and get some form.

If we wanted a prop to cover the second row then Sutton did a grand job there a couple of seasons back but he’s another who I’d be more inclined to play in the reserves to try and shake him up. Unfortunately with FPN gone and Wells injured all the forwards have that bit less competition to push them.

Massively disagree with this. He's really blowing at the end of a 20 minute stint, and can occasionally struggle to get back into the defensive line/set at marker. Sutton or Flower are better options if you wanted a big back rower (which I can understand) because they are both more mobile and have better stamina. Betts would have him trying to shirt grab halves and centres all day if we stuck him in at second row. He would be gasping for air when we have the ball, never mind trampling over anyone.

He always looks like he’s flapping when getting back in the line as though he’s lost the spot he should be defending in.

So Bateman to centre again. Given our lack of size I can see why we do it but I would still rather see a centre playing centre and one of our best forwards playing in the forwards. Perhaps we should put another forward on the wing given the lack of ball they are going to get.

Bateman is too good to be left out, we all agree on that. In my view, Joel and Faz deserve their place in the 17 too and based on this season’s form, I’d be leaving Powell, Isa and Tautai out and bring Shorrocks, Navarette and Hamlin in. If I was picking this week’s team, it would be as follows.
Tomkins
Davies
Burgess
Gildart
Marshall
Williams
Shorrocks
Flower
Leuluai
Clubb
Farrell
Bateman
Lockers

Tomkins
Navarette
Hamlin
Escare

You’ve left Sutton out as well and that would be fair enough on current form. I was looking at some stats earlier and his average gain this year is a shade over 6m per carry. That is embarrassing really, especially for a kid who’s apparently off to the NRL. If he’s making that little impact on defensive lines in superleague then I shudder to think what could happen in that sort of company.

I say all that and what frustrates me is that like Tautai, the lad is a decent player but many of our players and especially our props seem to get in to a comfort zone. Maybe it’s the fact we’ve become a comfort blanket for our past players to fall back on when they don’t crack the NRL. In regards to the props I suspect it’s becausr the demands on them are so low. They’re never expected to take the ball from their own line and none of them need to fight to do longer spells as they know they’ll be sat back down in 15 minutes.