Saddened! wrote:
The treatment of Gaskell was bizarre and totally wrong. Hohaia was awful for the vast majority of most games. He simply isn't a halfback, never has been and never will be. He's a fullback and a much, much better fullback than Wellens is these days. We could have won SL if we'd played him at fullback and Gaskell in the halves.
This season has probably ruined all but a handful of our younger players, the damage could be very costly. Foster, Gaskell, Lomax, Magennis, Dixon and even Makinson (Some excellent finishes, but starved of ball and suffering under the high ball) have failed to progress this season. It's hard to imagine Gaskell, Foster and Magennis playing for Saints first team again and I suspect all three will be at rival SL clubs next season.
To be fair Foster's long, slow decline started a long, long time before Rush took over, and Dixon, on the rare occasions he's played, has looked greatly improved over the nonentity from last season. But the careers of Gaskell, Makinson and Lomax have most certainly suffered a very great deal under him.
Let's face it - Rush simply couldn't coach an exciting, varied attacking side if he tried, so he simply decided to cut his losses and play simple, grinding, percentage rugby all season. He decided he didn't need any halves to play that way and put the 2 best tacklers he had into the #6 and #7 shirts instead. And completely forgot about the fact that to stand any chance of beating top sides in big games playing grinding rugby you need a long kicking game and left the only lad in the squad we have who has one in the stands, and fatally compromised the game of one of our key forwards and our best defensive workhorse by making him do it instead. It's a wonder we managed to beat Warrington and Wigan once frankly...
