Dominance wrote:What squad improvements do you feel make us more able than last year?.
Rawlins and Hesketh were our stand out forwards in the last match and (allied to the expected return of Shickell) have been for a while. They didn't play against Warrington last year. Neither did JD (as Jamie Shepherd stood in). This year we have Law as well as Jodie Sheriffe as interchange props. Lewis Reid now returned shows he is improving massively each match - a real bonus.
White has been more than good cover for Moss and has potential to keep improving as well as his good try scoring strike rate. Leatherbarrow is now really fulfilling his potential and his all-round game (including fantastic goal kicking ability) is now contributing more than Obst did at this stage of the season.
This year Buster has shown he can do 80 minutes (which he didn't last year) and the unfortunate injury to Ryan Smith means that the really exciting Joe Parkinson can come on to cover half back and hooker if needed).
Daley Williams is already doing as well as Haythornthwaite last year. Ritchie Barnett is I believe a natural high quality player and is starting to show it more now than when Semi was here. Semi and Korki were good for us given their SL background but even then didn't break any pots.
My prediction is that Marchy will slowly but surely get more and more from this committed group of players and Cougars will end the season as high up the table as they did last year despite the bad start.