I want to like Smith. His defensive stats are certainly impressive. I'm not seeing it with ball-in-hand though; he often looks too sluggish to be a really standout player on attack. Maybe if some of the other players helped him out in defence a little more, he'd have a bit more energy?
We probably shouldn't underestimate losing Mellor after 2 minutes on Thursday. All the forwards had to work harder, and Thompson simply doesn't offer enough in attack. That said, I would have hoped with our much vaunted first choice props in the 17 (including Oledski, Prior and Tetevano) we should have had enough to dominate a Catalans pack missing some big forwards.
Otherwise, I really hope we don't need to use Briscoe too much in the centres this season. Sutcliffe finally started looking like a threat in the last 15 minutes but it was too little too late by then. First choice centres really ought to be Newman and Broadbent.