Nobody needs to be blamed for Penny, that's the point, the lad is doing nothing wrong. If you check your footage from last night, his positioning in the main was fine, it's his 'teammates' inside of him that are letting him down.

People are churning rubbish out, and were at the game last night, things like "That's three tries now down Pennys wing", No, no it isn't, It's three tries down the centres channel whilst Penny was in a decent position to make a tackle on his winger.

When he took Penny off, we were losing 16-14 and frankly, the only way I could see us scoring was Briers booming it downfield and him chasing it, as we couldn't get out of our forty with ball in hand.

No the forward were awesome, Riley and Hicks did nothing wrong.

The worrying thing JWP, is that it looks like Lowes is one of the Penny haters too!

Did he take Hicks or Johnson off when they got shown up by a 2nd rower and a kid? No. Did he take King off when he got stood up, no. Why on earth did he drag Penny off?

He did take Johnson off ace.

While i agree penny isn't a good defender he can't be blamed for any of last nights tries and doesn't deserve criticism for last night's performance.

How do you honestly come to this conclusion, on numerous occasions (3 or 4)
Penny was a good 10-15 yards from his wing man meaning he had to put his foot down to cover him and on 2 of those occasions they scored.

He took Johnson of for Bridge when he got pasted by Gilmour.

If you can get hold of Saints highlights DVD's from the last two years, you will see Gidley doing this to all teams in SL. Saints work the ball well, and get the ball out in a two on two situation. Gidley will inevitably score.

I suppose the only way you can defend this is to hit Gidley as he is taking the ball, but the way Saints move it, that is nigh on impossible.

When all said and done Penny is not at the standard of a Super League player (yet) and should be replaced as soon as Gleeson is fit, until we do try's will always constantly be scored on his side, weather you blame him, King or Lowes he needs to be dropped.

Your wrong, your looking at it too blinkered.

Personally I'm not that bothered whether he gets dropped or not. I like him, I like his enthusiasm, and think he is one of themost exciting players around. But, based on last night, I'm not sure he will ever get the ball out wide anyway, so maybe we are just wasting him.

My issue with the above though, is that even if we have Reardon, or Riley in that position, teams will still score against us down that flank, as the problem is not just Kevin Penny.

The inexperienced guy on the wing is in all cases too easy to blame for poor defence out wide. If Penny is 10-15 metres away from King in the line when the ball has been flung out says to me that King didn't slide across like he should have done.

Let me put it another way, if Penny were 'correctly' positioned in relation to King, then there would be a huge overlap out wide and Gardner would be in for an easy score - and I confidently predict that people on this site would blame that on Penny for not sliding out.

your being way to kind

Why? out of Penny and King, King offers most.

You are joking aren't you?

No.

Penny's positives are: He can run.

King's positives are: He isn't to bad at going forward (like a prop would), He can catch a ball (from the air), He is stronger.

We dont play to Penny strengths anymore,we dont get him
in the positions we don't kick over the top to drive the
opposition back and give him a chance to chase,since
Matt King arrived he seems to have struggled big time.

If he continues to be slagged off and taken off his
confidence will just dive again i think if he was
playing outside Gleeson or in the Saints or Leeds
team you would see him score lots of tries and his
defence would hardly get a mention.

Would rather see Matt King disappear than one
of our own trained but thats another thread.

Please don't insult me by suggesting i know nothing about rugby and it's nothing about hating certain player, it's what's best for the team.
I also feel that King has no confidence in Penny and that he would have more it Gleeson.

I'm afraid your comments about King offering more than Penny do rather validate my comments about your rugby knowledge..

Your incessant ramblings about how poor Penny is are totally wrong. Watch the game again - he was not at fault for any of the tries. The inside defence was atrocious, as it was for much of last season. Using Penny as a scapegoat is ridiculous.

You're as one-eyed as Lowes when it comes to Penny

I'm afraid that blaming a defensive frailty on the fringes on one player, when that defensive frailty is prevelant whether that person is on the field or not, does suggest that either you know nothing about rugby or hate the player in question.

If I had the answer to the problem I'd be a coach, but I remain quite confident that removing one young winger from the team will not cure it.

When Gleeson is fit Penny will probably be dropped, and probably in favour of Johnson. Then we will see if the problem down the left is due to Penny, or someone else!

I have also slated king on the Matt king thread but i think Penny is the worst defender and positional player of them both.

Sorry for having an opinion.

Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Nobody is entitled to not have their opinions shot down, especially if they fly in the face of the available evidence.

I'm half agreeing with LWF on this one. I'm not sure Penny is ready for superleague yet. A lot of people bang on about him learning but other youngsters (Blythe, Harrison, Riley) seem to fit right in without this 'learning' process. I don't think we can afford to have someone in our team who is still learning.

I panic when they kick to Penny as he seems to be quite unsure catching the ball.

Penny's occasional moments of genius do seem to be easily out weighed by his lapses in concentration. I'm not going to blame his positioning just yet as King going missing makes it impossible to blame him for most tries down our left.

King needs to play on the wing outside Bridge as others have said. to sure up the left hand side.