Have our players become so unfit that they need brief respites in each half? We had 3 big forwards to rotate with the 5 that started from the bench. To use Falloon in place of one of these against a big pack would have been a risk based on his susceptibility to leave gaps in the line. Falloon was cover at 9 in case of injury or poor form from Burrow. As neither of these senarios surfaced it was right to leave him on the bench. What would you have said if he had come on and given a try away?

Which clearly fatigued player are you talking about?

Could've done but the forwards were doing well and it would've robbed us of a proper ball carrier whilst Falloon is stood in the attacking line twiddling his thumbs not knowing what to do with himself as he's not use to not being at dummy half.

Hypothetical. He could have equally come on and scored a try to give more breathing space. Silly argument.

How many subs would have to go unused for you to consider it folly?

I wonder if the RL reduced the number of subs to three if McDermott would still prefer - and often choose - to go one less

Ablett and Achurch were out on their feet. As said, no problem with leaving Burrow on, but at 20-12 with six minutes left and the forwards blowing it might have been smarter to shore up the middle with a fresh defender. We weren't far away from paying for it.

We get it, you don't like the unused sub and on other occasions it's not been wise to do so....:but beating that drum when it was clearly a smart decision to leave the pivots unchanged is stubbornness. Even if Falloon came on for a forward he is still by nature a pivot and could've disrupted the other pivots.

Your arguments do appear to have been agenda driven against our coach over the years apart from when you flip flop to say you were wrong every time we have won the various cups and your rugby management ideas appear to be taken from the painting by numbers school or should I say say air fix instructions (boys version)

If a consistent view not affected by the actual fortuitous actual outcome is 'stubborn' then I plead guilty. ...
"By nature" it seems some people are McDermott acolytes and can see him do no wrong

We can't all be 'experts' I guess....just laymen who sometime care to express an opinion without really caring too much about the level of seriousness or importance. Otherwise we would be doing the job professionally and becoming the renowned best ever coach we might proclaim to be.

So even though we win it doesn't matter in terms of the unused sub, it was fortuitous.

Yet when we've lost with the unused sub it's proof that it doesn't work.

Hmmm, hypocrisy.