I appreciate it is only a friendly and the main aim is to get through it without injury but couple of nagging worries over our go forward again.

It was a real struggle for the team to make any yards with the exception of when Clark, who I thought went well, and Bullock were on.

Let’s hope we can bring in some quality go forward ASAP as we need it.

Only really noticed that in the second half when we were playing kids.

My problem was the end of sets. Biggest difference between the sides, obvious area of improvement needed last year but don't think we put in one decent kick.

Not too concerned but between injuries and players returning from Australia late I'm not expecting us to shoot out of the blocks

Clubb in his 8 minute spell looks 5 stone over weight. His pre season has been spent @ Pizza Express takeaways.

Didn’t really see anything in that game to give me much encouragement that 2021 is going to be any better than 2020 in consistency or reliance upon French/Hastings to do something to be honest. Go forward was poor and we lacked general direction on the field.

Whilst I appreciate it’s a friendly, and the first one at that, i expected far better than what was served up.

I was impressed with Clark. He put in a shift and was probably the best prop.

Hopefully it's (very) early signs of him kicking on for his 2nd season.

That game showed why we needed a friendly. We looked second best when we started to change things around. A couple of players are well off the pace at the moment and you can see why we pay big bucks to some but who were mainly absent today. I agree that our go forward still seems weak and when we win so few collisions we will always struggle. I hope that Harry Smith has got that one out of his system. His kicking was poor and he is still not a dominant figure. We have got plenty of fire power to come back in but I am not confident that Leigh will roll over for us. Byrne did well.
On the plus side we generally defended well and once again the youngsters did not let themselves down but a couple really need some game time this season or they will end up not having played much in two seasons.
My big worry is that most of our best forwards got a run out today and nobody really dominated. We cannot rely on one up runners to win games.

I agree there. Showed up well, perhaps a kick up the booty was what he needed.

This problem just becomes more and more prominent.

Same old pattern of making next to no metres in our own 20, clearing kick, defend in our own half. Pattern continues until we get a penalty.

We were useless with the ball partly because there was no energy left to attack with (obviously the missing players are the other part).

Smith and Bibby really poor, Clark was the only one who stood out. Bateman did OK in the first half.

Might be a struggle early on until the big names come back and get some game time.

I wouldn’t read a great deal in to a friendly but we do need to find some go forward through the middle from somewhere. It isn’t going to come to any great degree from Singleton or Partington but they do bring other qualities. There will be a big reliance on Bullock and Havard. Looking at today Clark and Kilner could really push for a place in the first 17.

It's mega frustrating how bad our last play options are. When you then factor in how good our defence can be, it's almost criminal.

If you stuck a Deacon in this side, we'd be pinning teams back in the corner and then forcing errors with our D.

Kinda negates one of our best assets really.

Smith really did have a nightmare today unfortunately - his kicking game is normally a strength but really struggled for any distance or accuracy.

I actually liked how angry he looked with himself - shows how far off he was from what he expects.

To be fair to Harry Smith, and I've watched him from him being 15 years old, that's the worst I've ever see him perform from a kicking point of view. I don't know if it got into his head about the one he dropped over the line for a certain try but it sometimes happens that things don't go for you. It's how you react that is important, and I think he'll be fine.