The thing is that The Salford area is mad on Man Utd and football.They have a stadium in a bad location and won't get a lot more fans anyway.May go to a average of 5000 maximum and we all know it is called Salfraud.lol

Maybe the reason Salford are struggling to get the crowds in the 20000+ seater stadium is cos the fans are all in the Casino and Hotel they built on site....

Hock is going to Australia, Salford fans are being led a merry dance by the Dr and Noble.

Just choked on my dinner as I heard they'd got Morley!
Good player, but injuries make him an expensive risk!

We've seen enough of Hock now to form an opinion, so how does everyone rate him as a player?

I might be alone here, but I don't think he brings any benefit to the team. Yes he has moments of shining brilliance, but for every such moment there is a negative moment to counter it. Tonight again, scores a decent try but lost the ball on first tackle in attacking position twice and conceded needless penalties.

I do think at Wigan that his contributions may have outweighed the errors due to players around him, but at Widnes he doesn't have that luxury. I wonder what Paramatta make of his performances.

(Btw, I'm not blaming him for loss tonight, just seems a good point to discuss!)

^ think I agree wholeheartedly Ste

He had a poor game tonight. Isn't capable of lifting our pack. Makes far too many mistakes for a player of his experience.

Problem with Hock is he's playing out wide so he relies a lot on our other pack members providing the go forward, which they don't have.

being a bit unfair but I do see your point. When Hock was at Wigan you would often see him running over players , but that was after the pack had sucked them all in and left him one on one with someone half his side. A bit like what Wakefield did tonight with Big Ali. Also due to his presence in the team he seems to be the go to man , whether the ball is on or not. On two or maybe three occasions tonight Brown gave him a short ball and got him murdered when the btter ball was out the back ? So maybe he hasnt made the sort of impact we wanted but he would be my first name of the sheet every week. Or would you prefer Big Frank ??

Frank Wintersteine has played better than Hock in my opinion.Too many errors and offloads that are not on to be honest.

I thought Hock put in a good shift v Wakey but you can see he is clearly unhappy at this club. His performances have deteriorated week after week even though you can see he is trying.

Not sure he's unhappy at the club but I always feel and I have said this on numerous occasions he's better when he's in field more as he's the one forward that runs onto the ball with any purpose apart from maybe Joseph.

Sadly the problem is that he can be isolated by the opposition, no matter how hard he runs the opposition gang up on his side of the field and whilst he might scatter one or even two players out of the way, he isn't going to get through 3 or 4. The rest of the side seem to just sit back and watch him do it with nobody backing him up. We just haven't learned how to get the best out of him.

Clearly Brown has a good rapport with him and can put him through gaps where he usually scores unopposed, but not since that fantastic early try against Hull where he ran in fast and hard and Phelps got himself on the end of a beautiful offload have we backed him up properly when charging into the traffic. I would have thought Hanbury would be the perfect player to be hunting Hock's breaks, although I know he is a marked man now and gets well covered with or without the ball!

Mind you last night wasn't about anything fancy it was about holding on to the ball and playing out our sets, basically that was all we needed to do and couldn't do it! Hope Mellor is only missing for the one game!

It's a good point about Winterstein.
Not going to suggest his best is as good as Hock, but his worst isn't as bad! I do think Frank will improve but really the argument should be Winterstein or Lulu?

Am I right in thinking that Tickle will slot in for Hock next year?

Hock is an excellent player in a good team.
In a poor team he is just ordinary.
Widnes at the moment are a poor team. To improve this they need to bring in a number of better quality players.