Team Selection???? Our squad isn't big enough to be dropping players all the time, if he puts a youngster in and he gets ripped to shreds by the opposition - you'll blame Agar.

Who has been ripped to shreds. It certainly wasn't Cowling.

I said IF.

I'm not saying it is MORE credidible but it was in the League Weekly too.

Glad someone gets the point. Kay and Goulding are natural stand offs. You lose your stand off, so just replace with a stand off. Before Sykes was injured we were playing something like, he gets injured and the team has 2 or 3 positional changes instead of one.After Bradford loss, not very likely that we were going to make the 8, so give the fringe players a go. Annakin not been seen for ages, perfect opportunity to play him til end of season. Or does the size of the contract decide who is better than who?

I don't really agree with this.
In principle I would always play players in their correct positions.

In practise you can't always do that.
In my opinion Agar decided that Goulding or Kay would have been targetted if started against Leeds or Bradford. Two important games that could have made a massive difference to our fortunes this year.
Playing Washbrook in hindsight stunted our creativity but it improved our defense considerably.
He decided it was better to do that.

It doesn't mean he doesn't rate the kids
It doesn't mean he should be sacked on the strength of the decision
It is just one of those decisions that he has to make when short on numbers.

I remember us playing Morton and Handfort when both made a mistake on tv. The 'fans' rounded on them and their confidence went completely.
He possibly tried them in training and decided they weren't ready yet, and protected them until they are.

I don’t think it took any major hindsight to come to the conclusion that Washbrook would offensively offer nothing at 6, if it wasn't obvious before the first Leeds game it would've been patently obvious afterwards.

With respect to opposition targeting the young players, half backs are always are target, be it Tim Smith, Lee Briers, Rob Burrow, Sam Tomkins (when he played there) Johnny Lomax etc. Age and experience doesn’t come into it.

Morton was unfairly hounded on I agree, but when he initially broke into the side he did well and was encouraged. His development was handled in the wrong way, but that shouldn’t mean young players should not get an opportunity in a big game. Liam Sutcliffe made his debut (or was very early into his professional career) for Leeds against Wire. They didn’t decide to play Brett Delany there just because a great, very experienced team in Warrington may target him. In fact he had a blinder and McDermott was rewarded for the brave decision to put faith in an inexperienced young player.

Agree with the above. Agar has in hindsight messed around too much this season with players in different positions. Unlike the top teams where players have their positions and roles we have seen 2/3 positional changes just to accommodate different players at 6. Smacks of amatuerism really.

Surely, Kay, Goulding both natural halfs should have been given the 6 role and encouraged. Also resulting in not moving players from their natural positions.

Agar did a great job last year but this year there has been some puzzling decisions this season.

The crux of that issue is that Goulding is not Liam Sutcliffe
If he'd been at our club he'd have been playing in front of Sykes.

Washbrook offering nothing in attack was obviously balanced with him offering a lot in defense. I guess they decided to see if the other players could balance it out...Mathers and Lee Smith for example. It didn't work. But it wasn't imho a terrible decision, it was just a decision that didn't work. Not the same thing.
A terrible decision would have been to put a kid in that wasn't ready.
(I clearly don't know whether Kay or Goulding were ready or not) I'm assuming Agar assessed that himself and made his decision based on that.

In conclusion;
Whats done is done.

Richard said months ago that Washy was struggling with ball in hand.
Yet he played him at 6 twice, I'm confused by this, why not use a proper 6 in L Kay or BG.
He also said Damny Cowling would have to wait untill Collis got injured to get a run.
Not really developing our young guns is it.

When there was talk on here about bring BG in, wasn't there the opinion here that after seeing him at Doncaster, he wasn't ready for SL/wasn't SL standard? So why now are some posters saying he should have been selected earlier?

It's Ok saying Kay & Goulding not ready yet. But having them sat on the bench/not playing them/them playing championship on dual regards isn't going to get them ready is it. Goulding played well for the 15-20 mins he was on the pitch on Sunda. Inches away from a 40/20 had saints not kept it iin play, and he did a great kick over for cockayne, only for Ben to drop it over the line. Did more and looked more interested than Tim Smith did all game.

I have to say that one of the criticisms I do agree with is RA's habit of shifting a team around to accommodate rather than slotting in a youngster; personally, I'd have been content with Kay at 6 immediately that it became obvious that Washy was useless there, and if he'd had a couple of stinkers, I wouldn't have been too critical. Plenty on here would though, and that's the difficulty of being a SL coach - you are more often than not damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Personally, I'd be happy to sit Timmy down for the last two games of the season and put Goulding and Kay at 6 and 7; lets have a proper look at them and see what they can do - it worked for Tomkins, Lineham, Sutcliffe, Escare, Swift etc etc, it might just work for us.