Yea we have far too many good forwards, some of them will look for game time elsewhere soon i'm sure. You are correct about the wings, but we don't really score tries in the backs anyway! Look at the decent teams this year, French and Field score tries for fun at Wigan, Warrington have Ashton scoring regularly and Johnson at Catalan got a hat trick this week. We toil away in the opponents half for set after set going nowhere then they make a single break and a speedster scores down our end. Watson has recruited to play a shockingly dull brand of rugby and it isn't even getting results

Just watched the wigan game back again on giantstv and it's clear that all the problems come from the lack of quality in the spine of the team. The forwards are immense, Rushton looks class, Seb looked back to his best, they created the perfect platform. Russell and Pryce can do nothing against a good defence that is up quick on them, they take bad options, put in poor passes and fail to get the ball out wide when we have the numbers. Pryce has a great step and pace and that's it, Russell doesn't even have that, he has a decent kicking game and nothing else, hes a championship half at very best. Lolohea is also having nowhere near the year he had last year so far and Peats is a pure plodder who can pass from dummy half take the odd scoot that causes no impact whatsoever. We are going to be totally reliant on what Connor brings to the table because the rest of our spine is miles off whats needed at this level. Such a shame with the great pack and decent outside backs we have.

I, for one, was left much happier by the way we performed last night.
Yes we lost at home again and by the same frustratingly close score, but at least we had a good 'go' at them.
We can argue the toss about the personnel brought in since last year, but the reality is, that's not going to change now.
Some serious work needs to be done to turn possession and pressure into points and I'm hopeful we can do that over the next few games.

We have a tremendous asset in Kevin Naiqama, but have yet to find a way to bring him into the game and unlock his obvious potential.
I can see the half back permutations will continuing for a while, but get there we will given time.

Perhaps the bookies got it right weeks ago and we are only really middle 4 contenders?
In which case our hope (pointed out a few times on this board) has to be, that we bring everything together for the play offs.

Salford next, how ironic!

I thought both sides were pretty similar in terms of ability last night, Saints just that bit more grit and were ruthless with the small chances they got.

Think Huddersfield are nailing the Watson tactics, stay in the wrestle and complete high. Just missing that clinical execution at the top end of the field but I'd expect that to come with a first choice spine playing regularly. Fages, Connor and Lolohea all missed a few games already and you'd have to have Pryce involved somewhere too, he has that bit of unpredictability and keeps the defence guessing. Marsters had some nice touches aswell albeit in an unfamiliar position, plenty for you guys to get excited about if you can build through the season.

Cas spine is Niall Evalds, Jacob Miller, Gareth Widdop, and Paul McShane, which I would suggest is better than yours.

Do me a favour
Mcshane is decent and so is Evalds.
Widdop is well past his best and Miller is poor.

We are the 2nd worst side at converting possession in the opposition 10 into points, and that is the job of the spine, hence our spine is 2nd worst in the league. We have zero pace off the mark from any of our spine players bar Pryce, which makes it very very hard to take advantage of quick play the balls. We also seem utterly incapable of executing any kind of passing skill , miss out passes, long balls (without getting intercepted) to create overlaps. Even if your assertion is true that Hull and Cas spine are worst (i disagree, i think both are better overall) that would make us have the 4th worst spine in the league. You think we are going to win anything with that? Watson has blown Ken's cash on the wrong players, and the worst thing is he saw our problems at the end of last season and hasn't done enough to rectify it (signing Connor is a plus negated by signing Peats to replace Levi)