PG is under a lot of pressure (rightfully) so he was never going to play Jamie Shaul or Danny Nicklas against london, though I agree they should have played but so should have Green and seeing him dropped whilst the likes of Galea play sums this coach up for me.

Are people [ireally[/i forgetting just how gash Niklas has been virtually every single time he's been tried?

And that's without even considering the calls for him to be disciplined/sacked following his Twitter shenanigans.

Think in this case we are being a little unfair.

In a year and a bit, Gentle has brought through Crooks, Green, Lineham and Bowden into first team players. All have played multiple games, not just 10 mins at the end of the odd game. This is clearly different to Agar when in his final year not a single young player got a debut in Super League, not even for 10 minutes!

He had 3 good wingers and no full back who has played first team, it doesn't look brilliant with hindsight but could have been a reasonable idea at the time. Briscoe actually looked promising at full back in one game (Catalans?) last year and then appalling at Widnes - along with the rest of the team.

Nicklas is not good enough, the suprising thing is we extended his contract.

We thought we'd cover our @rses just in case our 6 & 7 weren't able to make it onto the park................................................................................................................................................................

Been approached by countless SL clubs whilst out at York apparently.

I agree with others it is surprising why we would keep this type of player on our books. Maybe it's in the hope they will develop late or something.

cant argue with that

Apart from Shaul, Gentle has used a youngster at times, may be just a case of not having too many in together, our backline is hardly an old experienced one.

Personally i would have put Jason Crookes there, im sure hes covered that position before


As for Shaul, although hes got a squad number he may not be registered in the first team squad, so could be a case that it was too late to get the paperwork in, or even may effect salary cap etc

No but then why resign him if we have no intention of playing him when he was resigned for precisely this scenario to fill the void should we lose one or more of Horne, Holdsworth & Seymour.

Just in case Azza, Westy and Stilts also get injured.

Maybe they thought they'd give Nicklas one last chance to progress, but he hasn't.

Maybe his attitude hasn't been good enough.

Shaul has only been full time a few months, maybe they thought he wasn't ready, not least in awful conditions in a struggling side with outside backs already lacking experience.

Has Shaul been playing regularly for York though? I can't remember seeing his name on the team sheet much and he didn't play the weekend before the London game. Nicklas got an awful rating in the report from the local rag as well. So perhaps PG didn't have as much choice as some people seem to think.

No idea. The same as I've no idea why we signed Galea. I am pretty sure that Niklas would not have improved our chances one iota on Saturday though.

think he only played in the first game for york as their own fullback was injured, this is where not having a u20s/21s is coming back to bite clubs on the @rse! players like shaul are left in limbo not getting any game time at all and when we had an injury like on saturday it would've been madness and unfair to put shaul in with practically no game time this season!

All Gentle's fault I reckon.

We have a winner.