Quote: imwakefieldtillidie "Individually, I think Wood has done okay, but I just think we lack cohesion when he comes on and the team suffers. Also, Aiton looks devastating at dummy half, I'm not sure why we would want to play him anywhere else? As for Smith and John, at least one of them needs to start taking on the line or we will be in danger of playing some really fancy rugby with nothing to show for it. Having said that, I think it's too early too talk about splitting them up as they need time to build an understanding, but one of them needs to become the dominant partner, and for me that should be Smith.'"
Aiton looked anything but devastating at Dummy Half yesterday, I don't think I even noticed him for the first 40 minutes. Having said that you could say the same about the whole team in the first half yesterday.
The only time we looked anything like breaking their line was once Wood came on and livened things up.
According to the Agar interview on Radio Leeds after the game, we held back on bringing him on because of the injury to Kirmond and having to worry more about rotating the forwards. I personally think had we been able to bring him on earlier we would have won that game.
It's difficult because I'd like to see him given a starting spot but in place of who I don't know. I'd like to see us persist with the John/Smith partnership a bit longer but give them a warning that we need to see more from them or things will change.
If Wood was to spend 2 hours a day practicing kicking and make himself into a good goalkicker I think he would be a shoe-in, but I've said that before about any of the fringe players (not that a decent kicker would have helped that much yesterday as we didn't really have many chances to even attempt to go for goal).