As mentioned above folk forget the impact Sinfield's goal kicking has on the team & the result.
Friday's game was a prime example, most of our kicks were from the touchline or wide out & Sinfield missed one that hit the post.
Both sides scored four tries but Wigan used two kickers but only converted one try despite most of the kicks being easier or at least no more difficult than the ones Sinfield kicked.

Folk also forget how average he was at goal kicking when he first took over that role but as with his captaincy it grew to be brilliant.
I will say that i hope Sutty is given the S/O role but that "fans" A.Give him time and B.Don't compare him to Sinny or Mags he's very much his own player.

If he's prepared to put in the extra hours over the off-season to work on it, I'd be tempted to give Hardaker first shot at the kicking duties next season rather than Sutcliffe.

I agree.
It's noticeable that Hardaker now takes all our kick-offs/restart
something that I advocated even upon Sinfield's return & they tend to be very hard to deal with.

I've been calling it for it since a game at Widnes a season or so ago. Hardaker took the restarts in that game and they were a nightmare for the home team to deal with.

His restarts remind me of Pat Richards.

Exactly.
One thing that impressed me about Sandow in the Warrington game was the variety of his restarts - but then he did have plenty of practice.

Jamie Foster might've been more interested in his hair than rugby but he had a good re-start on him too.

Kicked off the 2nd half of the 2011 GF and BJB misses it and next thing you know we've barely touched the ball for 20 minutes and are 8-2 lead has turned into a 8-16 deficit that all started with that kick off.

Haha!

So that proves the past argument of whether 'practice' is key in becoming a good kicker

Which is why replacing Sinfield was always going to be our biggest problem. We have replaced JP's workload effectively with 3 new props who are better that our previous 2nd, 3rd & 4th choices and were able to have planned this in advance because we knew when JP was retiring.

Sinfield's move to RU seemed to come out of the blue and has thrown Sutcliffe in perhaps a year too soon. Sutty has undoubted talent but as you say has not yet shown the ability to control a game or make match winning goal kicks. So IMO we need a proven controller and goal kicker if only for a short term to see if Sutcliffe is able to step up. If these missing skills have to be split between more than one player, as per JP, then so be it if the budget allows.

To be honest Sutcliffe shouldn't be thought of as Sinfield's replacement.

McGuire should be Sinfield's replacement as the experienced man in the halves and Sutcliffe should be what McGuire was in years gone by.

Whether McGuire is up to that is another question. When the two played together as a partnership at the start of the year however it looked fairly promising.