French: I don’t feel it’s intelligent to make a call on French as a half currently. There’s a number of different variables that will change for next season. Let everything bed in before ruling him out just yet.
Hardaker: I’m posting about Zak in comparison to French. I rate Zak, safe as houses, but how often does he break the line? How often is he an attacking threat anymore? I actually don’t blame Zak for this but the way we’re structured doesn’t get the best of what he can offer.
Are we going to see French at FB? With the way we play his style suits the current system would benefit from his attacking out wide.
Getting such combinations wrong between the 1, 6 and 7 is very visible we’re disjointed, flat and often lacking. This has been a constant through 2019.
We’ve got enough about us to win games, but we’re still not playing well in attack and I honestly think we’re not good enough to challenge Saints sadly.
Wingers. I’m commenting on this as recently Burgess has been getting stick. He had a good game last night defensively strong and active in attack. Did well. In comparison we have Marshall. Again diamonds and rocks. Can be a sensation in attack but always has that costly error in him. His dropped ball after he made a good catch nearly cost us the game and put us under the pump for a sequence of plays which saw us zapped of all energy. Sadly when a winger or FB drops a ball or makes a mistake from a kick it’s often massive due to positioning and where the ball will he turned over.
I think moving George to 9 is Lam thinking about next season and not this. He better having Tommy there keeping George at 6.
Overall I think we have the players. Last night their work rate and effort in D won us the game. But the coaching decision made it very difficult to shape the attack after Powell was taken off.
I’m going to roll the dice. Next week, in a game which we can lose and still be in the GF, I’d play French at fb. Zak to wing or centre. Keep Tommy and George in the halves. Start Lockers let him be the link. Let French basically play like Tomkins.
Let’s throw something new and different at Saints.