What is Charnley like in defence? Goulding is his equal with ball in hand, it was his woeful positional skills in defence that cost him the No.3 Shirt

I feel bad constantly bagging Goulding over his defence, especially as against the Dragons he was having to cover for an injured Gleeson, but there are times when he seems hopelessly out of position.

As we entered the stadium on Sunday night, a friend said that we had no chance of winning with Goulding on the field. One chink in your armour is all a team like St George will need. And he was right - they didn't need to attack us anywhere else on the field, because that right wing was an open door to them.

Goulding always seems like an honest hard-worker, but I'm not sure he'll get too many starts once Richards regains fitness.

I have to agree, although I do rate Goulding, positional wise he can tend to look a little lost.

I can agree with that, there's times he flies out the line in Super League and it usually comes off for him, but against the likes of SGI it just didn't work. Although as has been said he had limited help from an unfit Gleeson in the first half. Why in attack the ball was repeatedly given to him to try and get into the corner against Morris I will never know, he had no chance.

The damage was done to our defence long before they got out to Goulding. HH, Tommy, Glees and Goulding couldn't cope with the crossfield running of Fien and Boyd. They pulled our lads out of position time after time.
If that happens against a class centre like Cooper then he'll tear you apart and that's what he did. Morris was brilliant and the two of them carved us up no end. Cooper had one try for his efforts and Morris two. Both could have had more.
StG/Ill obviously knew Gleeson wasn't fully fit and concentrated all their efforts down our right hand defence. Nightingale is a superb winger and he hardly had a pass from Gasnier all night.
StG/Ill are a class act and the level our lads played at was far above Super League level.
Bennett said that our absentees may make the difference and he was probably right. Fielden and Lima were big losses and with Pat and Finch not playing yet we were up against it.
I still believe Lima should have played. His offence was in a SL match and his ban should have been for two SL games. The ARL allowed Brisbane to play Andrew Gee against us in the WCC in 1994, he was in the middle of an eight match ban. Those matches he missed were all league games so he could play in the WCC.
The RFL should have allowed Lima to play.

If he wants to stay he will, IIRC he signed a 1 year deal with a 1 year option in his favour. I think it depends on what offers he gets from Oz.

He did. This is the 2nd year.

I think he meant Hoffman, not Carmont.

Yep. My mistake.

Ben Cohen not been offered a new contract with Sale. Maybe worth a punt for a super league team (not us btw)

Could he play right centre?

I can see this thread sparking into life again, if the mutterings are true, do we have a quota spot available?