I think that FB's ability under the high ball is pretty old hat these days as most bombs are contested by centres and wingers, with FB's taking only a tiny percentage compared to the past. Look at Steve Hampson. I don't think he ever dropped a high ball. I certainly never seen him drop one that I can remember. On the other hand, his tackling was awful and his attacking play pretty good.

Ok, the General's tackling hasn't been great but I stand by my previous post as it being secondary to an extra attacker.

I'm really in favour of those 2 ideas.
As for using 2 FB's, that could be workable, but it'd probably see off the 40/20 to some degree. Therefore, I'm not sure if that would be a good thing.

Surely if there is one less player in the defensive line then teams will exploit the extra space. Fullbacks are only effective in defending 1 on 1 line break situations, if the team that make the break have support they are about as much use as an ejector seat in a helicopter.

Yes thats possible but the defending team has to man-up and not allow any extra space, working a little harder shouldn't be a negative (note Catalans recently when they have had a man sent off!) and when a line break does happen you have double the second defensive line to cope with a supporting player.

As for bombs to FB's TB, Luke has received his fair share this season! ( I wonder why?

)

Having only just seen this post, I can honestly say I am suprised it has taken so long. the situation is becoming simmillar to the Gary Jack years,where critisism was just brushed away as "your wrong" if you didn,t fall in line with the licking. In fairness Ithink any player needs two seasons to settle,so lets judge next year,but remember when Jack came to Salford he was without doubt the best fullback in the world,but was a disaster for us,but no critisism was allowed,let us judge on what we see,and no be led by the nose.For me I expected a lot more but am willing to give him more time,but not to much.

I'm confident now Matt Parish is on board Luke Patten will come good.

It's always hard for any overseas players when they first come over.

Patten is a class attacking full back but of course when he is the last line of defence things have not always gone his way this season.

Personally i have not been a fan of Patten and think he is very over rated and he had under rated the quality of super league at times. Yes as mentioned above his attacking skills and stats are impressive but the defensive display(yes i know those in front of him were not much better)on friday was a joke and we would have been better playing a very good friend of mine from the north east at full back !!

I find it amazing that we get ourselves a top quality FB and people still find cause to complain. We are, currently, not a top 8 side and for some reason Patten is supposed to play like Robo-fullback and play the perfect game every week? Without going over old ground, I see where people are coming from but you are never gonna get the perfect player. As it stands, I'd rather have Patten with his current stats than many alternatives that could be playing for us.

As a progressive side we should be looking at Patten with a glass half-full mentality, not the other way around. Given a choice to swap his attacking capabilities for a fullback that could only defuse bombs and tackle line breaks, I would stick with his current stats.

The best fullbacks in the world are attacking fullbacks, not defence machines. This is 2011 not 1973.

I respect your opinion "TheButcher" but i also find it amazing that people can just overlook his defensive weaknesses just because he came here with a reputation. For me I just don't think he's been up to the task, his defence is a real sore point and needs to be vastly improved on, in an ideal world we used him like American football, we'd take him off when defending and bring him when attacking. Perfect!

I also understand where your coming from with the 2011 point, but correct me if I'm wrong I thought defence was a big part of a rugby league players game after all they've said it before 1973 "defence wins you games"!

If you watch more in depth, you'll see he organises the pack infront of him even when on his own line, its not up to him to stop a 2v1 when they break the line.

He also has a great pass in attack which can be a strong advantage to your line.

What about about the dropped balls from kicks of any sort which come in? Defence isn't all about tackling when playing fullback its also about defusing the danger from kicks, which 7 times out of 10 he doesn't do.

And as for your second point, where has anyone on this thread said any different?

Defence is a big part of RL in the modern game, I personally think that the one position that defence has actually declined with regards to importance is Fullback. It's just not as important as it used to be. Granted, in an ideal world fullbacks would be both defensive powerhouses and attacking geniuses, but it rarely happens like that in the real world. High kicks are fielded 90% of the time by wingers and centres. Fullbacks are like extra second rows or centres coming into the line. Their roles have changed from being predominantly defensive in nature to being almost exclusively an attacking player.

Patten has 15 assists. That's 60 points not counting conversions in a side where every point counts. Currently 9th out of the top 10 in assists in the whole SL. I would suggest his contribution outweighs the negatives

I know I'll sound like I think he's Neil Baker or something (which clearly I don't BTW) but just to add to his defence, it's easy to pick out the full back for mistakes as I've said before, but let's look at one of our other golden balls players, say Stef for instance , quality player on his day but compare his stats to Patten:

Try Assists:
Patten - 15
Ratchford - 10

Meters:
Patten - 1873
Ratchford - 1230

Offloads:
Patten - 24
Ratchford - 14

Tackle Busts:
Patten - 15
Ratchford - 10

Clean Breaks:
Patten - 9
Ratchford - 11

Missed Tackles:
Patten - 33
Ratchford - 42

Errors:
Patten - 21
Ratchford - 24

Penalties:
Patten - 4
Ratchford - 14

Not having a dig at Stef (although he has made the second most errors for us and given away the penalties - think of that next time you say "bloody Jewitt again"

) the point I am making is, as I've said above it much easier to to pick up on what a full back does wrong than most other positions.

Well spotted king of the shed,some very interesting reading there,like i mentioned above i think the general might have under estimated the quality of super league and perhaps/hopefully next season we might see a change in his style of play having had time to adapt to our game.I remember a certain matt king had a stinker of a season in his first year in super league! now look what he has achieved in the past 2 seasons !!

Come on now: have a think about this. How many times in the modern game does a one on one with the FB happen? Very few. Attacking kickers rarely put a high bomb to the central in goal area and prefer to put the wide defenders under pressure from their own attacking wingers.

The fact of the matter is that Brett Hodgson (for example) appears to have a lot more time to collect and run the ball back because he's playing behind a very very good defence, whereas some of our defence this season has been absolutely woeful: last week's game at Hull FC being just one of those examples. I agree with one of the previous posters who stated that you could put Billy Slater at FB in the current Reds team and he would probably look pretty ordinary.

I think Patten is pure class and I think we'll probably see a lot more from him in the future.

P.S. I have been known to be wrong before though.

If the players ahead of him were stoping them get within 30 meters of our goal posts then the bomb wouldn't be an option, they'd be forced to be hitting the ball 50-60 meters into or corners giving him more time to think, if you look at Hull KR they have fast line speed stoping teams getting yards to give Shaun Briscoe time to sprint the ball up field, that was the difference between us and Castleford 4 weeks back.

I tend to agree with the recent posts; it's our general defence that is letting us down. We need more line speed and solid defending. MP I'm sure will be working on this amongst other things. Keep the faith. I say the Salford Reds are rising.

I have to agree that fewer tries appear to be scored from line breaks than in the past. The stats may prove me wrong but there certainly seems to be more tries scored from either close range or from attacking kicks. I suppose you could say that tighter defences have created the need for more attacking kicks to open up defences. The question is though have better defences actually made the game less exciting a spectacle to watch? If I think back for instance to the 80/90's you would regularly see the likes of Joe Lydon, Offiah or Schofield, etc scoring some absolute long range corkers!

It would be interesting to know how many tries are started these days from within say a teams own half compared with the past? Lets be honest most of us would prefer to be jumping up and down cheering along a winger running at pace from his own 20 than watching him contest and catch a high kick to the corner from about a yard out.

Perhaps the NRL/RFLwill change the rules in future if defences improve even further, making the game 11 v 11 instead of 13 and ditching scrums to make the game more open and entertaining.

Ahh resulting to calling me for stupid for having a difference of opinion with you, very grown up!

FWIW I am as impressed as the next man with Pattens attacking ability, but no amount of stats or anything will convince me that his defensive weakness can just be swept under the carpet(Yes maybe his mistakes stand out more being a fullback), but lets face it there has been some absolute shockers by him this year, but then on the other hand he has produced moments of class when attacking.

After all we are Salford, we are more often than not going to be under pressure and for me IN MY OPINION I just don't think he's been coping all that well with it.

Your not allowed a different opinion than anyone who is connected to forever reds

Think the meters stat is a bit misleading ... Patten has had far more carries (371) than Ratchford (17icon_cool.gif, yet on a per carry basis Ratchford actually makes more yards (6.9m vs 5m). This is even more remarkable when you consider the amount of easy yards you'd expect Patten to get from kick returns.

Generally speaking though I think Patten has been a bit under-rated this season. Think if anything those stats highlight the areas Ratchford would need to work on if he was to stay in the centres (offloads, tackle busts, missed tackles).

I'm not sure Forever Reds (the posters) is anything to do with the running of Forever reds mate, I'd presume it's merely a name.

I agree. Seem to remember Patten being pretty solid under kicks earlier in the season. A couple of cocks ups at Wire and at home vs Quins and he is suddenly an awful defensive player? Not for me.

Haha i didn't know there was a company to do with salford called Forever Reds, i just see the posters and stuff so i picked it, if you look at my date it shows im new to the sport, just started watching two seasons ago

Not quite true though Karl he's made massive errors all season long and could have prevented many of the try's we have conceded, just go through all our games this year starting with Crusaders at MM and count how many 4 pointers should have been prevented by him.

Right this sounds like I've got it in for and I've not honest! He's miles better than fitzy and IMO the second best attacking fullback in the league behind Hodgson, but as I've already said I just don't think his defensive weaknesses can be brushed to one side just because of his attacking ability.

Anyway I'm leaving it at that now. See you all Sunday or the same 50 of us that always make the trip to Hull KR anyway!