Balmforth great in attack scored two tries but I suspect it’s the defence and the ruck smith has an issue with.
Elsewhere thought Hodgson was the best on the park, Tindall up there with the worst.

Maybe Smith sees Balmforth's future at loose forward, especially with Hodgson coming through and impressing.

Ideally both have a future at the club, not just one of them.

Squad will be even weaker next year when Pearson reduces the playing budget even further

Tindall struggling for form judging him on todays performance.
Hodgson played well. Litten seemed to have a paddy when brought off.

It was hard to really gauge the performance given Giants were mainly made up of Academy players by all accounts.

Hodgson was easily the best player on the pitch, his distribution from 9 really is first rate.

Balmforth went well but like somebody else said he got caught out of the play on the floor a few times and you could see he was angry with this. His second try was him letting out some of the anger as he was just monstering through them.

The fact as Academy player in Ben Johnson was picked at 1 says a lot about where TS sees Littens future.

Our defense is bad in general so id take Balmforth missing a few tackles but actually doing something in attack. An aging Houghton will tackle all day but its getting us nowhere ultimately.

Ive not seen anything from Tindall so far.

Yet Smith continues to play Houghton who can defend but doesnt have an attack mode and poor ruck speed

Playing with fire if that happens, wont take much of a dropoff in pass sales for crowds to drop off and dip below the IMG 7.5k threshold. We are then solely relying on he stadium for good points as the 3 year performancss average will be dipping even further.

The fortunate thing is with Fev having money troubles and doubts about travel costs for Toulouse theres not a queue of strong applicants from the Championship.

I think that under the current IMG format our SL status is relatively safe. With or without an A-grade rating we are still, given our current circumstances, comfortably one of the top twelve clubs in the sport which keeps us within the elite.

My big worry would be if in, say two years time, a decision is made to abandon any ranking process and to go back to straightforward on the field promotion/relegation.
If, in that scenario, the promoted team turn out not to be the usual sacrificial lamb (such as Leigh last year) then we suddenly find ourselves in a straight fight with Cas/Salford/Leigh/whoever to avoid the drop. Having pruned the squad back to the bare bones, in the name of cost cutting, believing we were safe come what may, there then becomes a genuine chance of relegation for us rather than a theoretical one.

We all know what the sport is like for carrying out sudden U-turns at a whim. If we continue to go with ever weakening squads we will run the risk of being caught out by a sudden turn of events. Relegation would most likely see the end of the club in its current set-up. We are not equipped to survive outside the top flight.

A few years ago I would agree that Danny’s defence was great but Father Time has caught up with him and after 20mins he’s spent. Yet we still keep him out there instead of spelling him, so sadly his defence is not what it once was.