(HDM)

The Black and Whites are still without first-choice full-back Shaul, who is on the comeback trail after picking up his second concussion of the season at London Broncos a fortnight ago.

Shaul was scheduled to be in Manchester this week for a test he must pass before he can make a playing return, but unfortunately it will be at least another week before he returns.

“He showed some symptoms earlier on in the week having done physical exercise so when that happens you can’t send them for a test. He has to be symptom free before he can got to Manchester for tests,” Radford added.

The head coach received more bad news this week as he will also be without Masi Matongo this weekend after the prop forward picked up a shoulder injury against Warrington, while scans on Ratu Naulago and Fetuli Talanoa came back negatively.

“Disappointed to lose Masi, I thought on Friday night he was our tightest defender through the middle. He’s had a fantastic start to the season so to lose him after the game just to tee the result off he was receiving treatment,” he said.

“Both scan results came back negatively, Ratu not as a negatively. It will be different timescales so we’ll have to wait and see, we’ll get a second opinion on them.”

Well Radord said today re: Matongo, Talanoa and Naulago "Both scan results came back negatively, Ratu not as a negatively. It will be different timescales so we’ll have to wait and see, we’ll get a second opinion on them."

You don't believe the club when they give updates but also knock them for not giving updates. Ok. It's frustrating but I guess some injuries are hard to put a timescale on. Wasnt they spot on with Sneyd's injury?

Oh look, more injury updates from the club. Fancy that

Booooo that not fair, I want my whinge

If I thought we had any chance of winning the Easter games I'd send the reserves to France. Taylor looked a bad one, so against their huge pack in the mud (bizarre!) of Perpignan I think it's one we can't expect anything from with up to 13 players out. Tbh can't see us getting anything out the Easter fixtures with Rovers effectively getting 2 weeks to prepare and frontline players back, and a very difficult Easter Monday game. Hope we play the long game and don't rush players back. On a side note it was good to hear how Shaul is mentoring Wynne, both throughout pre season and for this game.

We don't have that luxury to send the reserves and IMO sends the wrong mentality to the squad. You have got to pick your best side for every game at the moment and try get some confidence and momentum in the sails. Hopefully Levy can get a run out though.

That was my point really, arguably the Catalans game is the most winnable of the next 3 given Rovers' huge injury and rest time advantage, but it's also the one where I suspect we'll have fewest troops. We do need to send our best squad but it's highly likely to have only Paea in of our top 5 props and still missing a load of outside backs. I think we'll go with what we had today but Thompson for Taylor and Hadley for Savelio.

WE have two props Levy and Bienek sitting on the sidelines plus Jack Brown who had a good solid game for Doncaster today.
In the second row we have Langtree,Hadley and Thompson

How many more do you want?

They're not in our top 5 props are they? My point is that we have 4 first pick props, Taylor, Paea, Bowden, Green, with Masi first cab off the back up rank. It looks like 4 of them will be missing against a big Catalans pack. It's good we have a big squad but surely that depth of injury in the first choice front row damages chances of a result against Casty, Moa etc. I'm not sure how much SL experience the two you mention have but I don't think it's much. I mentioned Hadley and Thompson already.

We've now used 25 players this season, plus Green, Bowden and Talanoa.
AP said recently that we were running a 30 player salary cap, so that leaves just 2 places left, and it's still only early April.

Difficult choices if you add Harris and Sanderson to the mix.