To be ultra critical he missed 2 bombs,gave away n intercept, got away with another intercept and lacked the pace to get to the ball for waterhouses try. All generally because as good a job he did in tough times he isn't a full back. One of the above errors repeated could be the difference between winning and losing. Ultra critical of him I know but full back a pretty key position these days. If we lose the game you can bet their full back will be a massive reason why.
To me losing Shannon is a massive blow!

great point, ive said it for years, square pegs in round holes and all that... when someone is injured it should be a like-for-like replacement from within your squad, and not shifting players around to accomodate...
thats the problem great britain has had for years, playing people out of the natural position.......
asif rich horne played wing for gb???!!!! and they wonder why we cant beat the kagaroos....the mind boggles

Tbf to Gentle everytime we have had an injury he's replaced like for like & he's done the same for tomorrow night. I'd love to see Shaul out there at Wembley & these next few games give us the perfect opportunity to see if he's ready.

If Horne isn't going to make Wembley then Whiting has to play FB, not a chance Shaul should be fullback at Wembley.

I would play Shaul in some SL games but not at Wembley.

Even if Shaul plays superbly well in the next few weeks?

He's played one SL game, one!

Wembley is a massive stage for experienced players nevermind a novice, at fullback you are massively exposed too. No I wouldn't.

Neither would I, the occasions would be too much for him imo. One mistake early on and it could. F.ck him up for the rest of the game.

I know that but i'd be very surprised if Shaul plays superbly well and then gets dropped.

If Whiting was going to be the FB at Wembley he'll play FB in the next few games.

Do square pegs in round holes just paper over the cracks ?

There have been rumours about Shaul's attitude being questionable, if we let him play the next few weeks and he plays well, I'd question ours as a club if we then turned around and left him out for the final anyway.

At this moment in time my hope is that Horne is fit in time, but if Shaul plays well IMO you have to at least consider him, it's not right to already have the predetermined attitude that he shouldn't play at Wembley.

Talk of Shaul being too risky compared to Whiting is unfair until Shaul has had another go, especially when Whiting made 3 or 4 errors on Sunday himself.

He's played one SL game, arguably Wembley is the biggest game of a player's career. Madness to play him.

Why would you question clubs attitude. You don't think Gentle picking a team based on experience would be a sound basis to select from?

I don't like the idea at all but i'm talking specifically about Wembley. It's a one off game that is so huge you can't afford to take risks.

This.

Madness to play him without another game. Downright unfair and possibly insulting to let him dig us out of a hole for the league but then drop him for the final even if he impresses. I'm not campaigning for him to play right now, but we should be open to it. Having no intentions of letting him play regardless of how he does in the mean time is just blatantly wrong IMO.

Couple of questions:

If we'd somehow made last year's final, would you have played Lineham?
Briscoe had played 14 games before playing in the 2008 final, where's the cut-off for number of games before being ready?