I thought for much of the game they were better than us from a skills point of view.
We were fitter and our forwards were stronger but their 7 had an excellent kicking game and their ŕight centre and wing tore holes in our left edge.
I don't know if was particularly Lawford but the flood only stopped when Kay when to defend at third man in.

The score did not reflect how good Swinton were.

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Lawford got some awful passes because he was bouncing around like a Duracell bunny every 2 seconds when waiting for he ball.. he had no idea where to put himself and looked nervous and it showed, in the end it is was the right decision to take him off as he was having a disaster of a game. There is definitely a player there with lots of potential, we just need to manage his transition to being a first team player.

Walmsley, albeit not in his natural position, had a shocker. Was sat next to Gale throughout and he had a lot to say about him being absolutely nowhere when we had the ball... Then he'd pop up at dummy half and take the ball in when we were 10 metres out, he's just not cut out for FB, not even as a back up. I think in the end, we just had to rely on barging our way over for points.

Wasn't all their tries down the left side?

Also, Jermaine Mcgillvary.. if he keeps playing the way he is and he feels he has a year left in him get him signed up, as a back up even. He's still a super star of the game, head and shoulders above any back in terms of his carries. Yes, he is basically an OAP, but so is Ryan Hall and he is still one of the best...

Yes. It was their right against our left edge defense.

Yes and a lot of it was tactical aswell, which is where the issues presented themselves. Swinton for large periods of the first half kept going for 40/20s on the 4th, so we dropped back on Olpherts side on the 4th and they switched it up and ran the ball through hands when we did, really simple but effective for Swinton, just beat us for numbers.

Granted there were 2 really soft tries on the line down that side, one from Walmsley not dealing with the kick, the other one of the players got beat on his inside shoulder

yes my fault in previous post, I did mean their right and our left, sorry

It was a cracking game and a really good contest up until the last 20 minutes .

When we've gone behind previously this season I'm fearing the worst but now I'm pretty confident we can reset , not panic and find a way which almost inevitably we do by going direct .

I thought Swinton were excellent and were a very fit group but I also believe that many of our opponent's are bringing their best game when they play us and if they played anything like they do against us against the others they'd be doing much better than many of them are .

I think he’s already thought about it. He took Lawford off moved Kay out wide and the tries stopped instantly.

I don’t really like pinning things on individual players but Lawford simply wasn’t getting across to cover. It made Pratt look like a pratt when in fact there was little he could do. The only exaction was the third try, no idea with tat one as there were plenty of bodies there.

Sadly we all got a bit over excited about Lawaford but in truth he’s way out of his depth at the moment. He’s obviously got some skill especially his kicking, but that’s twice that he seems to have lost his nerve- not great. But at least it puts to bed all that nonsense that he should be ahead of Lino and Gale.

He's learning the game and how he can develop.
This was a perfect game to play Lawford. He was under pressure and targeted but he was protected enough by having players that can fill in and not lose the game.
Full time environment will give him the chance to find out whether he's got it.

I don't think the result was ever in doubt, but I do think today showed there's a fair few players who are nowhere near SL quality should we go back up. Twice now Lawford has been given a chance and twice he's struggled. We can argue he's young, but at 24 I think it's reasonable to expect more against Swinton when we have such a dominant pack.

Our props were the match winners again. Looking forward to seeing more of Bain, early days but looks like we might have another good one there.