I thought he stood up well when Wighton went off and I’ve been surprised how confident and comfortable he looks. He’s joint top of the assists chart for the whole league, so I think he can be pretty pleased with that start.

On the same note as last week, I’m still absolutely amazed where Hodgson gets his billing from. His performance was littered with examples of him hogging the ball and he threw in a few errors. The commentator praised him at one point for the exact thing that drives me up the wall about him and that’s him stepping out of dummy half before passing, rather than just getting quick ball to his forwards and halves. Doing it every so often is fine but it’s 50% of the time. The Aussies must look for different things in a hooker than we do. I’m convinced at the very least Roby, Clark and McShane are better players.

Yeah, I’m not his biggest fan but he’s loved over there, I also noticed he’s top of the charts in the NRL for missed tackles and mistakes so far this season.
As for Williams I thought he did okay, assisted all 3 try’s although Papali takes all the credit for his great try.

What we’d do for a prop like Papali to build the side around.

He's played very well in the last two games. Can't believe he's suddenly showing he does actually have a long kicking game.

You have to wonder why he’s kicked from further out than the opposition’s twenty about 5 times in 6/7 years with us don’t you?! He looked far and away in advance of Leuluai in that department on Sunday morning, so who has been holding that side of his game back here? Himself? Coaches? Tommy wanting the role?

Pretty baffling.

Williams always showed he had a good boot on him when he took conversions, it was never the power that let him down which always made me wonder why he never kicked out of hand from inside our half.
I always thought he would have made a decent place kicker but his confidence seemed to be a big issue, once he missed one he seemed to sulk a little and I don’t think he liked the responsibility, that may have been the case with long kicking? Maybe he’s happy to let someone else take the responsibility?

I believe Ryan Sutton had a good come back yesterday.

Sutton did well. I thought the game was pretty poor overall though.

Spot on. Terrible game - both teams seemed scared to death.

Commentators said he'd topped 100m, oh for props who can do that.

He did run around 40 of them off drop outs I think, but he did well. It'll be interesting to see how good he could become.

The metres the props make in Oz seem incredible in comparison to ours, yet when you watch the games they seem to be making the same amount of ground as the guys in Superleague do. I’m sure there’s some favourable counting going on down under.

Looked like a lad that knows he’ll have to bust a gut to keep a place in that team. I’ve said it numerous times on here but it’s his body shape and general fitness that is helping him improve. I’m stumped why he couldn’t find the motivation to get in better shape playing at Wigan. He was a good player for us but clearly left something in reserve. I reckon Wane will pick him for England when the time comes.

Apparently in the NRL they count metres from when the player receives the ball. Over here they do it from when they go over the advantage line.

I believe so. Hardaker was talking about it a week or so ago, saying that some of the metres quoted in Aus seemed artificially high.

Ryan Sutton played a lot of last season in the second row and even filled in at loose forward on occasions

Makes more sense the NRL way of counting to be fair

Many have more pressing problems to worry about at the moment than how meters are calculated!

Not really. The NRL way does not make sense. How can it be metres gained when the ball is passed backwards from where the PTB is? Metres are only gained once the player gets past the point of the last PTB, anything less is a loss of metres.

what if there is a chargedown and the ball goes back 20 meters and someone picks it up beats 3 men and makes 19 meters? your saying he should be put down as a minus 1?

No because the play was forced backwards 20 metres by the opposition so from the moment the ball is picked up, any metres run forward are metres gained and its a new set of six tackles so the position of the last PTB is irrelevant.

Wish I'd never mentioned it

but you said - Metres are only gained once the player gets past the point of the last PTB, anything less is a loss of metres.

Correct, but in your example, the last PTB is irrelevant as the ball has been played at by the opposition who have forced play backwards 20 metres. The tackle count has now been wiped clean and the moment the attacking player picks the ball up is essentially like the first PTB. Any metres run forward from this point are now metres gained. If the defending team pushes the attacking player back behind the point he picked the ball up, this would be metres lost.