Jake the Peg wrote:
Let's be fair, that was a scratch squad. From our start of season squad we had missing
Trueman
Carlos
Nu brown
Hoy
Jack brown
Sao
Ashworth
Fash
Walker
Mitch
Staveley
Through injury or suspension and okunbor and tindall not played as they are rubbish. No team in the comp could field anywhere near a competitive side with those numbers missing
That is fair but even if we’re just talking about last night, it reflects the fact that Hull FC have chosen to base their depth almost entirely around inexperienced academy products. It’ll be interesting to see if that tendency is quite as pronounced after Myler starts to reshape the squad.
I tried swapping out Rovers players, trying to pick fair equivalents. The starting 13 looked fine, although after Storton the bench was youthful. Not a 17 to be able go to Saints and expect to win, but much better than nowhere near competitive.
And it’s not like things were better when a fair proportion of the players you list were in the team. Or you’ve had to face other teams at their strongest every week (Leigh missing Lam, Asiata, Ipape and Amone, Saints missing Walmsley, Dodd and Clark).
I get that the performance was always going to be seen through the prism of this being a new dawn, and you’d be ‘pulling together’, rightly…. if it had happened with Smith still in charge though, I doubt anybody would be offering those mitigations. Tbf, that’s why he had to go.