Some unkind things said about Shaul on this thread. He’s been asked to take the ball up from acting half more this season. His one on one tackle in the second half on the Cas rampaging forward was absolute copy book. When he drops the ball, it’s a glaring mistake because he stands out more. People asking for him to be dropped is ludicrous. IMO.

you are right. Jamie Shaul is working very hard having to compensate for the loss of Houghton by taking a lot more runs from dummy half than he would normally.He had a great game against St George but the thread is about his positioning which does let him down at times.
I have said many times that if Jamie had a bit of Rankin in him with the natural ability to chime into the attacking line and produce the pass then he would no doubt be in the England squad.

Imagine how much stick he'd get if he hadn't scored the winning try in our first ever wembley win

"Chime" must be the most overused stevoism ever. It doesn't even mean anything to non stevo devotees

This thread has escalated into something other than what I first mentioned. I haven't mentioned his link up play, as he offers us different things in attack. It was to do with his defensive positioning, standing to shallow to not allow him to react to a break (Marshall x 3 times, Webster at the weekend), and his positioning when defending our goal line - staying in the line, rather than defending the in goal. If you look at the McMeeken try from the weekend, Shaul should be shadowing the ball, he should be in line with the guy kicking the ball allowing him to get to the ball, but he is 5-10metres from where he needs to behttps://farm5.staticflickr.com/4628/26681504788_7243b28bfa_z.jpg" >rlrl

This isn't scapegoating, it is trying to see reasons why we are conceding tries so that we can win more rugby matches

Problem is when we score a try from Sneyd's boot it's a great kick, when we concede a try from a kick it's poor defending.

Simple - play him at hooker
He has all the attributes and sh*t off a stick darting through the A gap with a tired defence tackling our big forwards

I did enjoy that try against Saints from dummy half ... but no. I just couldn't cope with the loud complaining about his passing.

Shaul is a great player . But I noticed last night when he got the ball in the attacking line he spun around and went backwards.
He needs to be chime in the line and be more direct.

This isn't a new thing.

You really notice when a team has a good full back how much space they can create for the centre and winger. Shaul is like barry banks when he gets the ball. It's not all his fault as we tend to have no dummy runners and players just ship the ball aimlessly out to him without ever committing the defence. If we could improve this area we'd win the league in the next year or two IMO

Ben Barba is showing the rest of SL what a good fullback can bring.
Jamie is a great fullback but needs to be more direct.