My main concern was our defence in the middle as Houghton and Heremia were clearly getting targetted by Rovers front rowers and not having Fitz in the middle to protect was a obvious miss.

What frustrated me about Houghton, is when Paea was picking him out, he was tackling him round the chest! He should be round the legs with another guy on the top to take the player down. Paea was just driving him backwards, twisting his upper body due to the size advantage and popping an offload away which had us scrambling

All tackling up top is what's in today's coaching manuals, they're even coaching the youngsters to tackle this way. Invariably, there are two men in a tackle, so why not one up and one down ? Seems the old adage of not being to run without your legs is no longer relevant. I understand the need to keep offloads to minimum but on Sunday we gave away a good two or three metres in a tackle whilst the momentum was stopped.

At one point in the game, someone had a hold on one of his legs and he still made a couple of yards, can't remember who or when it was, I'll look out for it on HKR.TV

I rememer that & IIRC surprisingly it was O'Meley.

In the words of Kris Welham, Paea is a "massive human".

Regarding tackling technique I personally dont have a issue with us surrendering a extra 2 yards as long as we end up with a slow PTB the problem on Sunday was that we would give up these extra yards after contact but not control the floor.

I agree we actually managed to get a hit on him 2 or 3 times which is 2 or 3 more than usual but that fact remains that our pack do not dominate and despite being talked up haven't done so for some time. We rarely get a roll on and seem to find it difficult to prevent the opposition from doing so. Until they do everything else will be done off the backfoot. Quick ptb for them , slow for us.

You can't really count the times that he never had the ball in his hands.

I've said it for a while we have good forwards on paper but they rarely dominate a game like sunday and not the great pack everyone talks about

We lack aggression in the forwards and there is poor technique in the tackle and a real lack of urgency to get a quick ptb

Although he only had a short stint on the pitch I thought that Ben Crooks showed some potential and did well.