Early days yet but so far deffinately in the running for player of the season for us.

Playing with better forwards in front of him has helped him no end.

In answer to the original question, No. He's steady and improving, but certainly isn't the best. His engine and work rate certainly is though

Needs to kick more, and early.

Isnt that down to the halves?

Why does it have to be down to the halves to kick? Houghton is arguably our best distance kicker we have and isn't far behind Sneyd with grubber kicks.
He's also our best chance at getting 40/20s and was unlucky against Leeds not to get one. I see no issue in letting Houghton have kicking responsibility.

Then we'll agree to disagree, if the halves aren't cutting it in terms of kicking that needs addressing IMHO.

We could have Thurston and Cronk as our halves doing the business in regards to kicking, doesn't mean Houghton can't muck in with kicks when he is as good at it as he is. It's another option which will keep the defence guessing. Don't see the problem with it at all tbh.

No problem with anyone taking an opportunity to kick, just think hooker has other responsibilities that are higher priority...

Josh Hodgson is currently a Dally M contender in the NRL, and the highest rated hooker on form. This is in no small part down to his kicking from dummy half. Cameron Smith has done it for years.

You've obviously not spent your time away from the forums watching rugby, or you've suffered (another) severe brain injury.

Nah it's down to whoever can kick. Sneyd's alright but gets shut down when he's the only kicker and his long range placement isn't that great. Remember many a game when we had Richard Horne kicking it 40m off our own 20 when stood next to Danny Tickle who could boot it into orbit. Even a certain Lee Radford had a boot on him.

We haven't kicked a 40/20 since Sneyd arrived at the club, that's pretty shocking tbh. I realise it isn't that easy but a 40m kick should be bread and butter for a full time half (in distance terms) and even if it stays in field, comes up short of the 20m line or even runs out the back that'sa lot of ground made.
Given the size of our pack I think it's another aspect we could be doing better at and Danny H can and has kicked them so he should be encouraged more to do so if Sneyd isn't up to the job (which is clear he isn't tbh)

Think a big problem is we only seem to kick on the 5th. Holdsworth's third tackle kicks went a long way to getting us to wembley in 2013, actually pinned teams in their own half even when we were losing the forward battle.