Did he score at the Kc?
I seem to remember most of their team did.


(Apologies to the rest of you. It's nice to play round at Jake's house for a change).

Your statement is not true. Please if you are to have a dig get your facts right.

Do all you Dobbins work nights or are you all so excited to be top of THE CHAMPIONSHIP you can't sleep.

I think this is the difficulty for Radford. Ellis likely retiring, Thompson OOC, presumably Hadley back in, the likes of Fash coming through, depends where he sees Abdull in that mix and whether we might want to spend differently in the back row. And is he a SL 6? He might stay at Rovers post promotion but they have a good record of bringing overseas halves in so he could fall down the pecking order there.

Dunno, I had my head in my hands for most of the match

Replacing Ellis has nothing to do with the position he plays, you have decent back ups in those positions and no doubt could get someone in who could play as well as Ellis does on a week to week basis, its the other stuff he brings you need to replace, the leadership, organisation (brains) and confidence he brings to the team when he's on the pitch and unless there's a player of a generation coming through (not seen one) then you'll have to spend big to get a replacement and even then its a gamble.

It's one factor of many for Radford to consider in balancing the back row part of the squad though. Ellis is irreplaceable for all the reasons you cite beyond having the 13 jersey. Radford will be thinking about other options available and may well bring in a different type of back rower, a line breaker possibly. Abdull won't get ahead of Sneyd and Kelly quite yet but would he be in our first choice 17? If not, maybe you keep him on a loan basis again, he's our player until end 2019 IIRC.

Keeping Abdull on loan would only happen if we fail to gain promotion, if we go up I think we'll look to have more permanency in the halves, can't see us keeping Ellis long term as I just don't think he's good enough but Abdull would go well alongside a good HB. All that would then depend upon Abdull and FC as to the options.

We need to learn how to play without Ellis as the leadership quality he brings is near impossible to replace, look at Leeds when Sinfield and Peacock retired.

We just have to improve our mental approach, Cas don't have an Ellis style leader and seem to do Ok, it's about playing to the teams strengths.

Difficult to compare Sheens and Radford as coaches in current circumstances, the two teams playing in different divisions. One area that does stand out in Sheen's favour is the development of Abdul. He is no longer the podgy apparently unfit player he was when at FC. Sheens immediately identified his ability and the extra weight was holding his development back. He is now much more effective than he would have been if he had remained at FC. I wonder why Radford did not tackle this issue. Having said that most people seemed to see the problem it just took a more understanding coach to do something about it.