Quote: robinho "First of all, sorry for the long post but my thoughts on last nightare this.
Haynes should have started at FB - we have a 3 year license. For God's sake, let's use it when injuries and international call ups occur to develop our younger players.
Welham, Webster, Walker and one of the reserves who is a genuine winger should have been in the three quarters. I thought Jake was one of our better players last night and about the only player who looked interested in tackling. Welham looked fantasttic when moved to FB, I don't think we need worry about having to cover Briscoe in the future.
Cooke and Dobson should be our fisrt choice half back pairing. Both have started to gel (obviously not last night!) and Cooke did at least try to get things going last night.
Given injuries to props, Fozzard and Mills (he did ok at Hudds) should have started with Wheeldon and Macca on the bench. All the props should be rotated regularly i.e. Fozzard should not be doing 30 min+ stints.
Fisher should alway start at hooker and we should let him play for as long as possible. None of this interchaging with Fitzhenry as Fisher has gone backwards since we adopted this tactic. A 15 min spell here and there is not long enough to introduce him into the match, get into his rhythm and and read the game to make the breaks he used to do regularly.
Second row should be Newton and Galea - it picks itself as does Murrell at forward.
Bench would have been Gene, Aizue, Wheeldon and AN Other. We should NOT be picking Fitzhenry just because he is a quota player. I get the feeling we play him for the sake of it and try to crow bar him into the team to justify his presumably high wages.
Last night too many players were well under par. I have never seen so many established players such as Galea, Newton, Fozzard, Walker, Murrell miss so many tackles and show a complete lack of disinterest.
I have said to friends I go to the games with that we do lack strength in depth at the moment, and the superb defensive efforts we put in earlier in the year were bound to tell eventually. I think our only major, major weakness is a lack of squad cover to rest the likes of Galea, Fozzard etc. Unfortunately at the minute once the likes of Vella get injured, we have limited numbers to cover significant absences like this.
Going back to the top of this post, it is another reason why we should pick some of the reserves from time to time to blood them and get them integrated into first team and SL rugby.'"
Top post and well written , it sums up what is wrong at the moment with Rovers. I too believe that since Fisher has been given his long 3 year contract he has gone backwards. He should be on from the start and encouraged to achieve more runs from dummy half.
