I noticed a crusher on Cust in the first half. Not sure if this is the one or not. No penalty

A weird bi product of the Easter weekend is Powell can play on Monday. He best enjoy himself because he’ll be out for a while after that.

I don’t think there is another reaction other than what most have given and I’m a bit embarrassed that my initial reaction was “nothing in that, games gone soft”.

Peet is steering the ship in the right way. I think we have too many squad players personally and though we need interchangeability, we also need dedicated centres, loose forwards, wingers. We are getting there and most would agree with me that 2022 was never about winning SL, LLS or CC or even beating Saints (though it goes without saying that would have been nice!!). It was about improvement across the board and as long as we’re seeing that most will be happy.

With Powell and Tommy now out for the foreseeable it’s a huge opportunity for Smith and O’Neill to make it impossible for Peet not to have them in the side. I hope giving Smith, if that’s who we go with at HB, a good run of games in this side will improve his confidence immeasurably. I fear that if he doesn’t grasp this chance he’s on his way through the exit door. O’Neill can’t be put into that bracket but again it’s a massive chance to stake his claim for hooker. That crusher tackle could have consequences far beyond a ban for Powell if O’Neill takes his chance.

Powell used to go in at the knees on static players, he's got history for crappy tackles, gets all he deserves as far as I'm concerned.

If Shorrocks is our back up, then I'm worried. He's a great tackler, loads of effort, but he isn't clever, he isn't fast and his passing speed out of the ruck is very slow.

Grade E is 4-8 weeks I think.

Interesting to see how we readjust.

I’ve long thought we had a good cover for every position bar hooker.

I like Shorrocks but only as an emergency 9 or covering for 15 mins or so.

O’Neill would come in cold.

Could

1 Field

6 French

7 Smith

9 Cust

14 O’Neill?

Be an option?

Not ideal losing Tommy and Powell at the same time.

Square peg, round hole for Cust at hooker. I’ve no doubt he’d do a job but for my money he needs to stay in the halves. O’Neill all day long

I think we’d have to swap Field and French in that set up. The debate about the ability of French to play in the halves had some minutes in focus yesterday and he was really poor. Field is more of a natural half looking at their past appearances in the NRL.

Bans kick in fro mnext weekend.

That means Hurrell is also banned for the semi

I think with Powell out there's a risk of making so many changes that the good things we've done so far this year could be disrupted. Surely the best thing is to keep as much consistency as possible.

Our best player this season has been Field because he's so dangerous at fullback. Is it essential that he's moved into the halves? No. So keep Field in the position where he's been arguably the best player in Super League so far.

Do we need Cust to play at hooker? No. We may have lost Leuluai for a long time if not the whole season so why move our other first choice half and start playing with a completely untried partnership several weeks in? He's been playing reasonably well at 6 and we need some consistency so surely common sense says Cust plays 6.

We've lost our scrum half, so play our back up scrum half in Smith. We've lost our hooker, so play our back up hooker in O'Neill. Yes, Shorrocks may also have to cover at 9 which I'm not a fan of. I don't think he's terrible there but I think he's been massively underused as a 13 and in his last two games has made positive impacts when he's come on.

There may be a way of moving Cust to 9 late on and then getting Field into the halves for a short while, but in general I don't understand the idea behind completely disrupting the team by moving players who have established themselves in a certain position when we've already lost key players around them.

Good point - hopefully Hopoate and Grace back by then fingers crossed!

Let's not change half the team around for two absentees.

Smith in for Tommy.
O'Neill in for Powell.

With Ellis and Hardaker back (and hopefully Marshall soon) we should be okay.

I’ve got a lot of time for Matty Peet I have to say. He’s a thoroughly likeable bloke and even as a Saints fan I can say that.

Every time I see him interviewed he impressed me. Yesterday he gave no excuses, was very complimentary towards Saints and didn’t defend the Powell tackle, even saying that he hopes Bennison is okay.

There’s no doubt at all that if given time he’ll get Wigan back to the Wigan of old again.