Yip.......40 yrs og going...ultimate glory boy me

That's rich coming from you,I hardly post on here now due to all the whingeing

There's been a noticeable drop off in whinging since your self imposed exile

good positive post. one slight caveat i would add is though you make a good case out for areas where we should improve, we really don't know how other teams will address their shortcomings. so where we might improve a few percentage points, so might the other teams around us. of course the biggest factor is injuries (or lack of). its the one really uncontrollable thing that can affect a season.

one other positive is that last season radford ended up with several players he really didn't want anywhere near the squad. it has been obvious who these were, and they are now gone. this season he seems much happier with his squad, hence the early recruitment and no late panic buys. i take this as a good sign

The first half dozen games are even more important than ever before, if Radford gets the first 17 wrong early doors and/or we start slowly/lack cohesion then we could easily lose all six (Hudds, Wire, Salford, Wigan, Leeds, Cats is a very hard fixture list), that would put us massively on the back foot not only in terms of points but confidence. There are absolutely no easy games this year, Wakefield look the weakest by a distance but they turned us over last season & a sneaked draw.
I would feel hugely dissapointed if we don't win 3 out of the first 6, for all that has happened over the last 15 months I'm not massively optimistic but I truly hope Radford can prove me wrong and get the players busting their balls, showing us the kind of metal AND skill that we should be expecting as well as re-focusing on the little things that seemed to have passed us by last season.

Really difficult to choose a 17 out of that squad. Obviously we have no idea who's ripping it up in pre-season, who's not, and the friendly's to come - ut I'd go with:

Rankin
Lineham
Sa
Michaels/Yeaman (depends on opposition/conditions)
Lancaster
Pryce
Sneyd
Paea
Houghton
Watts
Ellis
Minichiello
Westerman

Feka
Bowden/Green
Thompson/Hadley
Shaul

Nothing too controversial there - maybe Rankin over Shaul at FB - I just feel Rankin has more to offer in that position, and I'd like to see him get his hands on the ball as much as possible.

One thing that keeps me fairly optimistic is that Radford has seemingly learnt from mistakes made last year. We can only compare against last years pre-season at the moment, so the real test will be after his first few games - whether last seasons problems have been addressed or not.

While I think Rankin has a chance at getting the fullback role why would you drop Talanoa for Lancaster ? Lancaster has a lot of development to do, he was dropped from the GB academy team and was apparently not good under the high ball.

We also don't know what position the club see Michaels in, he has played a lot of his NRL matches on the wing plus he came here recovering from injury so was behind in everyone else in conditioning.

He has a particularly good record against a certain club, finding it easier to score against them than most and seems to get right under the skin of their supporters so could be considered for that fixture.

I'd atleast look at playing Yeaman against a side with a big right side 2nd row/centre/wing combo, and in the games where the conditions are bad, resulting in a forward battle - there'd be little point having Michaels' pace out there.



In all honesty, I don't rate Talanoa that highly, but he does impress me in his kick returns, defence and overall effort. However, Lancaster has pace and can finish, Talonoa didn't look a threat in attack and doesn't score enough tries IMO.

Of course, all this might change. The new signings at HB could mean Talanoa gets a lot more try scoring opportunities and he didn't get a pre-season last year that he has this time. We'll see what happens, it's a close call for me & I expect Talanoa to start the season under Radford anyway.

I don't doubt that Lancaster has the potential to be a great winger but go back and look at the tries he scored for us last year and ask yourself if Lineham or Talanoa wouldn't have scored them ? In my opinion they would have scored all of them and provided stronger defence and safety under the high ball.

Of the youngsters who came in late last year Jack Logan was the one I was impressed with the most, he scored one try again Leeds out of nothing but I'm not calling for him to be a first team regular just yet. Its great to know we have options though and players who can cover for injury/less of form.

Not sure I agree about lancaster. He has plenty of work to do but his awareness and backing up were better than both lineham and talanoa IMO. Still a long way from being ready for SL week in, week out though

Shirt-pulling vs a massive red and white fadge. She fell over.