Phuzzy wrote:I think the slow starts are still an issue despite the good win on Sunday. Clubb being out, if that's the case, could help with this but I do think it's noticeable how much better we are when the likes of Burgess, Bullock and Clark come on. I guess you could argue that, as a tactic, it's working fine but I wouldn't necessarily relish going into Good Friday with that as a game plan. I feel we need to offer a bit more go forward in the early stages of games and I'm not sure a Byrne/Partington combination is the best one to achieve this. Partington's 'dancing feet' try at the weekend still points to him being more than just a battering ram. I also thought he passed at the line a la Lockers a bit more too which was good to see.
I'm not saying it wouldn't work for the Hull KR game but I'm not so sure we wouldn't be better utilising the, on paper, easier games to prepare for the sterner tests to come.
Horses for courses for me. I fully agree that going in to Good Friday I wouldn’t be starting with Partington and Byrne but circumstances dictate that selection at the minute IMO. I don’t think Flower will be right to start, George Burgess is probably better served playing from the bench for a couple more weeks and that would leave me with a choice of who warrants a starting shirt more out of Bullock and Byrne from Sunday and Byrne was comfortably the better performer on the day.
Going forward I’d want us to hopefully work towards getting George Burgess ready to start on Good Friday. We can’t afford to start that game back peddling against Thompson and Walmsley and I fear that is what we’ll be doing unless we throw something back at them from the off. It’s nice to have some options regardless and to be able to think about how we can build in to that game.