[quote="NickyKiss"]The big debate will be to stick with French at 6 or not. I do think it could work but not how French is playing the role. He isn’t taking the ball to the line enough and he is stifling himself by constantly moving the ball on. I’ve been saying that for weeks and it hasn’t really improved.

It’s now or never in terms of making the change. We can’t keep changing such a pivotal position, so we do it now or go with it until the end of the season. I would make the switch but I’m not somebody who says it has to automatically be Miski to make way. I don’t think Marshall has been at his best throughout the year and I’d have it as 50/50 as to who misses out. I’ll sit on the fence and go-

Field
French King Wardle Miski/Marshall
Cust Smith
Ellis O’Neill Dupree
KPP Farrell Smithies

Subs
Hill Mago Byrne Nsemba[/quote

Put Hampshire in place of Cust.

I'd stick. He showed decent form and quite a bit of improvement against Wire. The semi final was a one off in poor conditions, a man down and where we defended for much of the 2nd half. I think he just needs time. You don't become a top half back in just a few games. He has the requisite skills if we allow him to settle there with the added bonus of being one of the best defensive halves in the comp.

It's a win/win for me as, if he works out over the rest of this season, it's problem solved for next. If he doesn't we have Keighran coming in or a full off season to bed Field/Hampshire in.

Edit: Btw, there's a good statistical analysis on the other forum regarding French at Wing/Fullback/Stand off that seems to support French at stand off. I won't reprint it here but the conclusion is that French isn't the problem. It's that the pack is misfiring largely due to missing personnel. That's something I wholly agree with. Someone added this statistic which is really telling:

Average points conceded per game with Havard & Ellis in the team - 10.1
Average points conceded when only one of them plays - 21.3

That's staggering even before we factor in the loss of yardage going forward without one or the other and, in particular, Havard.

Looking forward to watching Dupree, him and KPP provide some athleticism and tackle breaking ability in the pack to go along with the grafters.

Yeah, looking at Duprees stats and the big one that jumps out is the number of tackle busts he has compared to our other props, I think he has around the same of the rest of our props combined.

We will soon knock that out of him

K P-P starts 2nd row, Cust Mago Nsemba Dupree on bench, rest as you'd expect

Not a bad squad out. Big bench hopefully see our forwards do their fair share of carrying us up the middle

Well balanced 17.
Looking forward to it. Hopefully the conditions will help us move the ball around.

A lot of over playing but been awhile since I’ve seen our forwards make meters. Mago and Dupree making a big difference. Not too late for Mago

Infinitely better side when we attack with some ambition, structure, multi-layered running lines, etc.