Tough as nails for a young prop. Unearthed some gems and I hope we keep faith in them.

like tamata looks like he spent too much time on a sunbed and not the barbers

Well he certainly battered your forwards - boom boom

I think today answered Kears critics. Gledhill isn't quite ready it's that simple.

You can clearly see the lad is keen and has all the attributes apart from an extra stone in weight. However that's no substitute for experience and just that little bit of maturity.

However the biggest problem he has is that we are a young team and he is the youngest of the young. This means we are gambling on young players every week so you can hardly blame Kear for not wanting to push it even further.

Truth is Gledhill looks a good player in the making but so do Amor and Johnson and there a wee bit further on. Patience young Jedi say I - how nerdy was that!

I agree, Kear is playing it right with Gledhill. A game here and there when needed will help his development but he isn't physically ready for superleague week in, week out. He needs to 'bulk up' a little and fine tune the art of front row play. I really do feel that a dual-registration deal with a championship club would do wonders for the kid because the potential is there for all to see.

I thought Ben had a good game, the highlight being him holding them up over the line.

Padewan, surely? Even nerdier.

I agree with Theboyem - a dual registration for the rest of this season at a local Championship side would enable him to grow in confidence and develop his technique, without getting smashed to bits by the beasts of SL.

i agree it would be a good move, even dual reg with widnes (if possible?) would be good, after all there a super league club in the championship

Overall he did, but was he better than Amor or Johnson or Higgins - I think not. When Korki and King are available who would you drop out of those four?

The off load from Ben on our ten resulted in us loosing the ball. This put immense pressure on us and i think we conceeded three tries in quick succession. Trin of old would of lost the game in those circumstances, fortunately we held on through that period, but Ben needs to learn from that.

He also conceeded a poor penalty after only just coming on that cost us a try. Again not knocking the kid please don't think I don't rate him because I do, just pointing out that he is still a bit raw even in a team that is fairly raw.

I have watched young Gledhill in the reserves quite a bit and I rate the kid. As for yesterday I thought he possibly tried too hard and made silly errors, he will learn and will come good.

The thing that worries me is, when I first saw him play for us at on cold night in fev, he looked massive. We signed him shortly after that and I remember a game at HKR when he came on and knocked the opposition around. Since that time he seems to have lost a great deal of weight and is now looking more like a s/r than a prop.

I know what you mean but I think it's more a case that players like Mariano and Amor are big lads and oddly we are a bigger team than last year.

He has actually put weight on but it must be difficult coming in and out of the side. He must feel the need to impress and cement a place and with such little game time confidence can be knocked.
He held players up twice over the line yesterday to save tries and the offload to Frankie is what people remeber which went to ground.

This is the bit that causes the problem. Clearly Ben is ambitious and wants to play. Yet for me at his age in that position he doesn't need to cement a place and is putting pressure on himself. Why his confidence should be knocked I'm not really sure. The reason he isn't getting more game time IMO is not a reflection on his game but rather the reality that other players are playing even better.

I must admit I have occasionally wondered in recent weeks why he at least didn't get a bench spot but I'm not the coach. However even being in the first team and playing as regular as he has isn't bad for a 21 year old prop.