Listening to the refs explanation, anything along the lines of "it's direct contact to the head with force...." - as for the two on Thursday - then it's certainly surprising they aren't sent for HIA, given all of this was brought about under the guise of player welfare. 


At some point the RFL will cotton on, HIA's will happen,  players will fail them and the practice of staying down will fizzle out for a while, then gradually creep back in and round and round we go. 

Why wasn't the head on head by the Salford defender on McDonnell picked up as a yellow card then? Direct contact to the head, thought that was a foul nowadays? 

You can only beat what’s in front of you, but I wonder what some of the top teams would have done to Salford Thursday night. Brad Arthur seems to have managed half a job in his time here, but our attack doesn’t look to have improved as much as I expected. I’m loving watching Jake Connor, such a clever player with ball in hand, and a couple of great 40/20’s already this year. That matches our total for the last 10 years. It was nice of the RFL to give us the extra 2 points and a bye so early in the season with our extra game against Salford. I can’t believe anyone seriously thinks these extra games are a good idea or remotely fair.

A truly fair comp would be play each side home/away. Once wouldn't yield enough revenue, twice would be way too many games. 

So, you're then into the realms of extra fixtures and any notion of "fairness" goes out of the window. The NRL is no different in this regard.


Move to 10, or 8 team, comp and the possibility of home/away twice becomes real. That brings its own issues with repetitiveness etc. 


Which brings the very notion of home/away into consideration. More Vegas /magic type events? Watching the NRL this morning, they're on the road again. The NRL is a tv sport that has fans as an extra. SL is the opposite, for the moment. 


NRL return on investment may very well come with a massive price tag in how the domestic game looks. New clubs entirely? Franchising where teams move, a la NFL? 


A clear case of thinking very carefully about the future and making an informed decision. Eyes wide open. 

Pretty routine win really.
Clunky attack and should have scored more, but defensively very strong.


Agree with most comments.
McDonnell (obviously) was very good.
Connor good again, proving to be a very good signing so far.
I also thought Newman played pretty well, forward pass aside.


Frawley really is pretty pointless. Jack should be playing more.
And we definitely need a 9 with more attacking threat from DH.
I expect us to be looking at the NRL for next year.


Frawley & Lisone out.
Cleary and and NRL 9 in.
Replace Lisone with a british fifth prop - Salford have some options (Bullock, Ormodroyd...)