It's good that we have genuine competition for places in the pack, unlike previous years where there were players who became complacent and perhaps thought themselves bigger than the club.

Yeah i thought Bullock had a solid season for us, if he carries on his form he could take Dudson's bench spot. I think The bench will be Walker, Kasiano, Dudson and rotating Between Bullock and Mikaele. But it's a nice problem to have for a change. I do agree though that i think Philbin is genuinely going to struggle to get a spot in the 17 again.

u thought he was ok, didn't look tremendously off the pace considering the injury and the step up

one thing i did think last year, he got hung out to dry a bit when we were losing games and clark was trying to hit him with the chris bridge bullet pass at the line, i think he dropped every single one of them and the crowds were getting on his back a bit, but it wasn't his fault

I think the thing with Harrison, and the same with Anthony England to be fair, is that he isn’t Chris Hill.

Hill came in and added to an already great pack, taking to Super League in the first few weeks. Walmsley did the same. So anyone that came after them was expected to step up seamlessly, which is really unfair given just how good Hill and Walmsley have been proved to be.

Harrison did ok, not great, but ok. And he didn’t have a pre-season. He’s had a chance to get a feel, now an undisturbed pre-season in a pack that is equipped to stand up for itself we should see him improve and develop. He may not get to the top, but he looks to have the basics to be a super league player.

I've still got hopes he'll be a top player for us.

He's got a great pedigree given his father's outstanding RL career. Fingers crossed.

I agree too on Philbin, it's going to be a tough ask. I wonder whether he'll regret taking the foot of the pedal over the last few years.

Philbin would do well to try and squeeze every bit of knowledge and advice out of mcguire while he's here, to try and model himself on him, change his style to that kinda 13, and stop being a full on prop, its not gonna happen,

Yes, unlike Chris Hill, Harrison didn't get to join an established, functioning pack. When Chris Hill joined in 2012 we had Morley, Monaghan, Carvell, Wood, Cooper, Waterhouse, Westwood, Harrison, Solomona

We say this every year.

I remember this time last year thinking that we had the crappest pack I could remember and I speculated on here that even the pack from our grim 2002 season was better than what we had for 2022. All the replies here were people telling me how much competition we had for each spot



Then after the pre season friendly against Wigan everyone saw the writing on the wall.

And yes that pack with Fozzard, Clark, Wood, Hilton, Burns, Domic and tennis ball Pepe would have steamrolled the 2022 pack!

True but how many players could have come out of the Championship and immediately become the best player in that pack.

I was trying to put a positive spin on things. Personally I did not use the argument of competition for places last year. That pack was garbage. However I do think there was complacency in previous seasons that we had 2 automatic pick forwards who were never in danger of losing their spot.

A matter of opinion of course, but I don't think he did, well certainly not "immediately". My take FWIW was that he made the smoothest of transitions possible because a) he was definitely SL standard and b) he was surrounded by top performers that were still doing the business.

I think that it's fair to say he surpassed our expectations, and lived up to the well meant hype from our pals in Leigh but the best thing about it IMO was not the performance but that it was (unfortunately) an all to rare occasion where we looked like we knew what were doing in terms of recruitment and succession planning