It has to underpin every performance this season if we're to steer clear of trouble. That's why the Salford defeat was the most disappointing to me - poor defence cost us that game.

I dread to think where we'd be without Ellis over the last couple of years, while he is no doubt getting a massive salary you can't fault his effort playing injured when he could quite easily think 'I'm not going to win a trophy anyway I'll just collect my cash'

The possession played a big part admittedly. As has already been stated it was 57-43. But the percentage of total yards made was 60-40. That means Wigan made 150 metres more than us that can't be put down to possession. That's not good enough when we've stacked the bench with forwards.

That was a little bit Phil Clarke'esque. But you get my point.

For all those forwards we had zero impact down the middle.

The defence did save us, but it was scrambled rather than robust. Wigan were begging on the wings but we failed to capitalise on that and spread the ball wide, even when Charnley was lame and helpless. The plan may have been to pass the ball inside for the pack to take up but the pack wasn't up to it. And the one time we did pass outside instead of inside was our last chance to draw or win a game that should have been won long before then.

If it wasnt for bowen and the other wigan player messing Sneyds kick we would never have scored till the game was ovet and wigan would probably have scored more and not panicked

Time for Jack Logan to be given a chance in the centre, Radford will never drop Yeaman, he must be able to see how poor he is these days.

Poor strike rate these days. Since the start of 2013 I make it 18 tries in 57 games, just 14 tries in the Super League.

He is not ready yet for regular first team football but no harm in playing him in some matches.
Yeaman is pants
Just don't get Radford putting Ben Crooks in the untenable position he did.Young players will always make mistakes like Lancaster did last night but to let Yeaman get away with his recent performances is criminal.

Logan, May no be quite ready, he offers far more than Yeaman, saw that against leeds last year.

What's happened to Cunningham, can't have Houghton doing 80, he gets tired with all the work he does and makes mistakes like last night.

Agree with you but he needs to play selected games so he doesn't suffer like Ben Crooks did under Radford
Don't know about Cunningham but I would like to persevere with Rankin Off the bench to cover Houghton

He's not under Radford any more thankfully so he should start killing it any time soon.

I agree, put him in the team. The likes of Horne, Cooke and (coincidently!) Yeaman weren't necessarily ready for the first team when they were thrown in at the deep end back in the day. I'd rather see promising youngsters making mistakes than the same old tired faces plodding along.

He wasn't right impressed was he? Doubt we'll get him to another game when he's next over.

the plan of a fool if that was the case!

Personally I think Watts can be if we'd just play the right sort of game to suit him. He has a good offloading game, but this will never be exploited with one-man rugby.

I didn't see the Wigan game, but in general I would extend the same defence to Sneyd as I did to Miller; it's much harder for a half to take the line on effectively with such a dearth of runners. With limited options they're only going to get cleaned out because the play is so easy to read. If was in their shoes I wouldn't be queuing up to get thumped, either.

Miller seems to be playing quite well at Wakey. Ellis is playing well at Hudds. Both scoring tries.

Both look inconsistent to be like they were at Hull, I wouldn't personally take either on them over our current halfs, I still think Sneyd will turn out to be a better player than both on them.

Pryce has been doing it pretty regularly although physically he's a different kettle of fish to Sneyd. I've been disappointed with the consistency of Sneyd's kicking game. Some good kicks interspersed with some shockers. Needs to improve there most of all in my opinion - that was one of the main reasons he was brought in.

There will always be exceptions, I was just talking as a general rule I will personally make an allowance for a half not taking the line on when supporting runners are in short supply, and especially when we also have a pathetically slow ptb speed meaning they don't get much chance to run at scrambling defences, either. As you say, Pryce is also quite different, he can mix it with the bigger guys much more.

Agree about the kicking (although I didn't go Friday). To say that was one of the strengths we signed him for it's been very mixed. Our ptb speed again hasn't helped at times, though.

Hopefully it will change, but it's noticeable that some of the same problems/complaints have started to sneak in about Sneyd as were levelled about multiple previous halfbacks in recent years. It's getting tiresome how we keep seeing new players come in to replace those who aren't good enough (not just at halfback), only to see them develop many/all of the same problems that they didn't have before. It cannot be bad luck or coincidence to see it keep happening.

Sneyds tactical kicking wasn't great at cas last year, that was left to Ellis a lot, it was his off the cuff play, chip throughs, off the cuff kicks to the corner on 2nd tackle etc that caught the eye. If you try that sort of play without backs who read it it can look bloody clueless. Maybe it's just a case of the backs reading his play book. Sneyd isn't an organiser who'll lead you round the park, pryce needs to do that which he can do but it's not his ideal game.

An acting half who can dominate the ruck and organise rather than one that just runs his blood to water would fit in better with the current halves and would have helped Miller last year as well.

Long kicking game is miles easier when the pack have the upper hand. Being able to kick off the front foot from around half way with a retreating defence is a lot different to getting it from a slow ptb whilst sat in the pocket on your own 30. On Friday night in particular it would appear that he was having to kick from deep in our half too often.

Very true. It's been some fairly aimless kicks near the line that have been most disappointing. Lack of comms with his backs hasn't helped although to be fair I'm not sure how alert they are most of the game.

Our halves, for once, are not the problem.
None of our 2nd rowers are ball handlers and our backs (in general) are far too slow. On Friday, once we started to throw the ball about we looked dangerous down our right side as Michaels & Lancaster have pace to burn. Really looking forward to see how these two progress over the coming weeks.